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O  ISLANDS 


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UNIVERSITY  OF 


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EARTH 

SCIENCES 

LIBRARY 


THE  AUTHOR. 


THE   TWO   ISLANDS 


AND 


WHAT  CAME  OF  THEM. 


B  Y 

THOMASiCONDQN,  Ph.  D. 

Professor  of  Geology,  University  of  Oregon. 


PORTLAND, OREGON. 

THE  J.   K.   GILL  COMPANY. 
1902. 


Copyright  1902,  by  THOMAS  CONDON. 
All  rights  reserved. 


Printed  and  Bound  by 


The  Irwin-Hodson  Company, 
Portland,  Oregon. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

Page 
Introduction 5 

CHAPTER  I. 
The  Stone  Quarry 7 


CHAPTER  II. 
Sources  of  Materials 15 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  Two  Islands 25 

CHAPTER  IV. 
The  Siskiyou  Island 36 

CHAPTER  V. 
The  Willamette  Sound 54 

CHAPTER  VI. 
The  Shoshone  Island 73 

CHAPTER  VII. 
Introduction  to  Life  of  Lakes 99 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region 114 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region 130 

CHAPTER  X. 
Surface  Beds ............     151 

CHAPTER  XI. 
The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley 157 

CHAPTER  XII. 
An  Indian  Legend 177 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
The  Development  Theory ' 183 


426 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

FRONTISPIECE — The  Author.  OpP-  Page 

PLATE             I  — Fragment  of  Miocene  Sea  Beach 8 

"                 II  —  Trigonias 16 

"              III  —  Fragment  of  Cretaceous  Sea  Beach      ....  20 

"                IV  —  Ammonites 24 

««                 V  —  Aralia  Leaf 28 

VI  —  Cycad  Leaves 36 

"             VII  — A  Heap  of  Bones 40 

"           VIII  — Oreodon,  Type  Head 44 

"              IX  — Oreodon,  Broad  Triangular  Crown 52 

"                 X  —  Oreodon,  Long  Nasal  Bone 56 

"               XI  —  Comparison  of  Camel  and  A uchenia  Bones     .  60 

XII  — Oreodon,  Size  of  Fox 68 

XIII  — Rhinoceros  Head,  Side  View 72 

XIV  — Rhinoceros  Head,  Upper  Molars 76 

"              XV  —  Rhinoceros  Lower  Jaw 84 

"            XVI  —  Entelodon  Head 92 

XVII  —  Bothrolabis  Head 100 

"        XVIII  — Canis  rurestris 108 

XIX  — Canis,  a  Smaller  Type 116 

XX  — Felis 124 

"            XXI  — (i)  Donkey  Bone 132 

(  2-8 )  Hipparian  Bones 

"         XXII  — Anchitherium  Jaws  and  Teeth 140 

"       XXIII  — (i)  Distal  of  Radius,  Touch et  Horse   ....  148 
(2)  Anchitherium  Molar  Teeth 

"         XXIV  —  Hipparian  Foot 156 

XXV  — Hipparian  Molar  Teeth 164 

XXVI  — (i )  Ulna  and  Radius  of  Camel 172 

(  2 )  Same  of  Dray  Horse 

"       XXVII  — Leg  and  Foot  of  Auchenia 180 

"     XXVIII  — (1-3)  Mylodon  Toes 188 

(  2  )  Mastodon  Tooth 

"        XXIX  — Bos  Latifrons  (Broad-faced  Ox) 196 

XXX  — Mammoth  Tooth   .                                 204 


INTRODUCTION. 

The  want  which  these  pages  attempt  to 
supply  is  a  popular  rather  than  a  scientific  one. 

For  years  our  General  Government  has 
been  publishing  through  railroad  surveys  and 
the  annual  reports  of  the  United  States  Geo- 
logical Surveys  a  large  mass  and  wide  range 
of  geological  information  on  the  structure 
and  history  of  our  Western  coast. 

But  this  large  body  of  information  is  so 
scattered  that  few  have  the  time  to  collect 
enough  of  it  to  form  a  continuous  unity  of 
its  history.  Besides,  there  are  many  things 
in  the  geology  of  Oregon  of  lively  interest 
to  the  young  and  the  uninstructed,  and  run- 
ning through  them  all  are  the  threads  of  a 
continuous  unity  that  seem  capable  of  a  pos- 
sible narrative  form  such  as  might  increase  the 
interest  of  the  young. 

An  attempt?  to  meet  this  double  want,  not 
with  a  fresh  contribution  to  science,  but  with 


6  Introduction. 

an  attempt  at  picture-making  for  the  unin- 
structed,  has  led  to  the  writing  of  this  story 
of  "The  Two  Islands." 

THOMAS  CONDON. 

University  of  Oregon, 

Eugene,  1902. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  STONE  QUARRY. 

The  ancient  traveler  and  historian,  Herod- 
otus, long  ago  put  on  record  the  statement 
that  he  had  heard  from  Egyptian  priests  that 
in  a  range  of  hills  along  the  eastern  border  of 
their  country  the  rocks  contained  buried  sea 
shells.  The  priests  contended  that  these  shells 
were  in  such  positions  and  numbers  as  to  in- 
dicate that  in  some  countries  the  sea  and  land 
had  changed  places. 

The  same  thought  occurs  to-day  to  many 
an  humble  quarryman  who  disclaims  all 
thought'  of  geology,  but  who  does  know  his 
stone  quarry  is  nothing  else  than  a  petrified 
sea  beach.  Professor  Leslie  finely  says, 
"Every  rock  fragment  that  lies  upon  the  sur- 
face of  the  crust  of  the  earth  has  legibly  writ- 
ten on  it  and  around  it,  the  facts  of  its  his- 
tory if  he  would  only  study  them."  The  evi- 


8  The  Stone  Quarry. 

dence  for  our  study  of  these  facts  varies  all 
the  way  from  the  vague  conviction  of  the 
quarryman's  judgment  to  the  convictions  that 
are  founded  on  the  closest  scrutiny  of  the 
facts  by  men  whose  whole  lives  are  devoted 
to  the  study  of  just  such  things  with  all  the 
skilled  culture  of  the  age  to  help  them.  In 
addition,  then,  to  the  quarryman's  conviction, 
we  have  skilled  students  of  science  testifying 
that  they  find  in  these  very  stone  quarries 
the  materials  for  the  exact  study  of  plant  and 
animal  life.  So  complete  are  these  materials 
that  they  satisfy  all  inquiry,  and  produce  a 
conviction  that  in  prying  apart  the  stone  lay- 
ers of  the  rocks  the  scientist  is  in  reality  open- 
ing the  leaves  of  the  past  history  of  our  world, 
and  that  in  these  buried  leaves  of  sand  stone 
and  mud  deposits  of  seas  and  lakes  of  former 
ages,  he  is  uncovering  not  only  the  real  shells 
and  bones  of  the  life  of  the  period,  but  even 
the  ripple  marks  of  the  waters  that  once  cov- 
ered them. 

On  Plate  I  we  have  a  very  good  engraving 
from  a  photograph  of  one  of  these  rock  frag- 


•IT 


The  Stone  Quarry .  9 

ments  of  an  ancient  sea  beach.  This  frag- 
ment here  photographed  is  twenty-two  inches 
in  length  and  sixteen  inches  in  breadth.  The 
twelve  or  fifteen  large  shells  of  the  print  are 
of  the  family  Mactridae,  one  of  which  is  so 
well  represented  in  this  tablet  of  stone  in  the 
genus  Mulina,  a  form  that  was  very  abun- 
dant along  the  coast  when  this  beach  was 
formed.  A  handsome  elliptical  shell,  the  Tel- 
lina,  is  represented  in  the  plate  by  eight  or 
ten  impressions,  some  of  which  are  distinct 
enough  to  give  a  good  idea,  not  only  of  the 
shell  form,  but  revealing  the  minute  lines  of 
its  growth  or  its  ornaments.  Two  or  three 
straight  impressions  are  made  by  the  frag- 
ments of  the  genus  Solen,  a  razor  clam  which 
was  an  abundant  shell  on  the  Pacific  coast 
of  those  times.  In  addition  to  these  bivalves 
the  reader  may  notice  three  or  four  snail  like 
shells  of  the  family  of  the  Naticidae.  These 
two  were  abundant  on  those  ancient  sea 
beaches  of  which  this  piece  of  rock  is  a  frag- 
ment, having  been  taken  from  a  ledge  of 
sand  stone  in  the  foothills  of  the  southern 


io  The  Stone  Quarry. 

part  of  the  Willamette  valley.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  surface  of  this  specimen  is 
thickly  strewn  with  those  shell  forms  varying 
in  size  from  a  hand  breadth  to  the  minutest 
specks.  These  lie  exposed  on  the  surface  or 
"buried  in  the  mass  of  the  rock  at  different 
depths,  some  so  slightly  held  that  the  shell 
material  is  easily  displaced,  others  almost 
buried  from  sight,  still  others  only  found  by 
making  new  fractures.  Many  of  the  bivalves 
*  are  tightly  closed  as  when  alive,  others  spread 
wide  apart,  and  all  these  covered  with  sand 
and  mud  just  as  one  sees  such  forms  along  a 
sea  beach  of  to-day. 

And  now  of  all  these  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  they  are  not  strangers  to  the  student  of 
to-day,  but  forms  familiar  to  all  who  have 
even  a  slight  acquaintance  with  the  ocean  life 
of  our  own  times.  As  soon  as  one  accepts 
the  conviction  that  this  piece  of  rock  is  a 
fragment  of  an  ancient  sea  beach,  then  at  once 
follows  the  question,  ^How  far  does  this  old 
fossil  beach  extend?"  One  is  compelled  to 
answer,  "Thousands  of  miles,  like  our  present 


The  Stone  Quarry.  n 

beaches."  And  this  leads  to  another  inquiry: 
"Are  these  other  beaches  older  or  newer  than 
the  one  represented  by  this  tablet?"  Many 
are  older  and  others  newer;  the  newer  ones 
where  they  touch  it  always  overlying,  the 
older  ones  underlying,  the  beach  of  this  tab- 
let; and  no  part  of  the  continent  but  pos- 
sesses its  share  of  this  wonderful  history  of 
the  past.  The  Rocky  mountains  in  their 
highest  reaches  bear  upon  their  shoulders 
these  records  of  a  former  life  under  the  seas. 
Let  us  look  at  the  subject  from  another 
point  of  view.  If  we  make  a  rough  catalogue 
of  the  stone  quarries  of  Western  Oregon,  in- 
cluding in  our  list  only  those  that  have  been 
worked  sufficiently  to  give  a  fairly  full  set  of 
their  fossils,  we  shall  find  one  at  Ashland, 
one  west  of  Medford,  one  at  Jacksonville, 
and  one  or  two  in  Josephine  county.  In 
Douglas  county  we  find  a  notable  exposure  of 
fossils  on  the  North  Umpqua,  twenty  miles 
east  of  Roseburg;  in  Coos  county  we  find  one 
at  Cape  Arago,  another  on  Coos  river,  a 
third  on  the  Coquelle  river.  In  the  Willam- 


12  The  Stone  Quarry. 

ette  valley  we  find  twenty  or  more  well  worked 
stone  quarries  along  both  lines  of  foothills 
from  Eugene  to  Portland.  Now,  if  we  col- 
lect from  all  these  localities  their  characteristic 
fossils  and  spread  them  out  before  us,  and 
then  call  upon  our  quarryman  to  examine 
them  without  any  help  from  science,  he  will 
at  once  separate  them  into  three  groups. 
Jackson  and  Josephine  county  fossils,  as  well 
as  the  rocks  that  contain  them,  having  a  fam- 
ily likeness,  he  will  place  by  themselves  in 
one  group.  He  will  as  promptly  select  Doug- 
las and  Coos  county  rock  and  fossils,  and 
make  of  these  a  second  group.  He  will  with 
equal  readiness  place  all  those  from  the  Wil- 
lamette valley  in  another,  a  third  group.  If 
you  ask  him  for  his  reasons  he  will  answer, 
"O,  they  look  different;"  and  so  they  do. 

If  now  we  doubt  the  soundness  of  our 
quarryman's  opinion  and  call  in  a  student  of 
science,  he  will  at  once  verify  the  classifica- 
tion of  the  quarryman  and  declare  that  Nature 
herself  pronounces  its  correctness.  Plainly 
this  will  at  once  suggest  to  our  quarryman 


The  Stone  Quarry.  13 

the  explanations  that  these  different  groups 
of  rock  may  be  the  petrified  beaches  of  three 
different  beach  periods,  and  in  this  explana- 
tion the  quarryman  and  the  scientist  are  at 
one.  This  new  thought  becomes  important. 
Let  us  see  what  it  implies.  If  we  designate 
the  first,  the  Rogue  River  group,  because  of 
its  association  with  the  Rogue  River  valley; 
the  second  the  Umpqua  group,  because  of  its 
association  with  the  Umpqua  valley;  and  the 
third  the  Willamette,  because  of  its  associa- 
tion with  the  Willamette  region,  and  these 
three  groups  are  held  to  represent  the  sea 
beaches  in  their  relation  to  each  other  in  the 
order  of  their  occurrence,  this  order  must  be 
universal.  This,  also,  is  found- to  be  true,  that 
whenever  these  groups  are  found  in  contact, 
the  lower  one  is  always  the  Rogue  River 
group,  the  Umpqua  next,  and  the  Willamette 
the  uppermost.  Not  only  is  this  true  on  the 
Pacific  coast.  The  world  over,  the  group  of 
rocks  we  have  associated  with  the  Rogue 
River  valley,  geologists  have  called  the  Cre- 
taceous; the  group  we  have  associated  with 


14  The  Stone  Quarry. 

the  Umpqua  region  they  have  called  the 
Eocene;  the  group  we  have  associated  with 
the  Willamette  region  the  geologists  of  the 
world  have  named  the  Miocene. 


CHAPTER   II. 
SOURCES  OF  MATERIALS. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  the  reader's  at- 
tention was  centered  on  a  few  type  speci- 
mens of  the  shell  forms  found  in  stone  quar- 
ries. It  is  now  proposed  to  dwell  on  the 
materials  of  the  enclosing  rocks  in  explana- 
tion of  their  structure  and  history.  In  order 
to  do  this  more  fully,  the  thought  of  the 
stone  quarry  must  enlarge  itself  into  the 
wider  thought  of  the  whole  rocky  layer  of 
which  this  stone  quarry  is  but  a  small  frag- 
ment. In  short  we  are  to  think  of  a  sea  or 
lake  beach  hundreds  of  miles  in  length  strewn 
with  shells'  and  bones,  often  with  leaves,  fruits 
and  branches  of  trees,  all  buried  in  sand  or 
mud  and  elevated  to  the  crests  and  slopes  of 
the  hills  and  changed  to  solid  rock.  It  is 
with  this  wider  group  of  facts  we  are  now 
concerned,  and  we  propose  to  inquire  about 


1 6  Sources  of  Materials. 

the  origin  of  the  rock  materials,  their  travels, 
and  the  agencies  that  elevated  them  to  their 
present  positions,  as  well  as  to  the  hardening 
process  that  left  them  solid  stone. 

If  we  travel  for  even  a  few  miles  along  the 
banks  of  any  large  river  just  after  its  flood 
season,  scarcely  any  fact  awakens  more  in- 
terest than  the  enormous  quantities  of  mud, 
sand  and  gravel  one  sees  left  by  the  flood  in 
the  quiet  reaches  of  the  stream  during  this 
period  of  high  water.  In  a  river  bed  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  Columbia,  the  quantity  of 
this  annual  deposit  will  awaken  surprise  when 
seen  at  any  one  point  of  its  course,  but  to 
realize  its  full  magnitude,  one  must  think  of 
the  whole  length  of  the  river  bed  bordered  by 
these  deposits,  and  further,  that  they  are  not 
stationary  in  any  portion  of  the  river  bed, 
but  all  drifting  further  down  stream  every 
flood  time  till  they  reach  the  ocean  or  the 
lake,  while  fresh  materials  are  drifting  from 
the  mountains  to  take  their  place.  If,  now, 
we  would  trace  this  stream  of  sediment  still 
farther  toward  its  fountain  head,  we  will  find 


e 


Sources  of  Materials.  17 

its  continuance  in  the  currents  of  a  thousand 
rills  made  turbid  by  rains  that  wash  down- 
ward what  last  -winter's  frosts  loosened  from 
rocks  and  ledges,  and  that  these  rills  converge 
into  brooks,  the  brooks  into  creeks,  the  creeks 
into  rivers,  and  these  into  the  Columbia. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  course  of  this  great 
flood  of  sediment  that  runs  a  continuous 
stream  from  the  mountains  to  the  sea.  Once 
out  at  sea  the  current  that  brought  it  there 
ceases;  the  heavier  particles  drop  to  the  bot- 
tom at  the  mouth  of  the  river  while  the  lighter 
and  finer  materials  are  drifted  by  the  currents 
of  the  ocean,  till  the  whole  has  found  its  rest- 
ing place  as  water  sediment,  covering  in  its 
muddy  or  sandy  beds  whatever  of  shell  or 
bone  or  branch  the  life  of  the  time  casts  off  to 
be  received  and  covered  in  these  wide-spread 
deposits. 

Admitting,  now,  that  all  these  river  cur- 
rents are  forever  washing  sediments  into  the 
seas  and  lakes  and  burying  in  their  masses 
the  harder  portions  of  animal  bodies  such  as 
bones,  shells  and  teeth,  there  remains  the  fact 


1 8  Sources  of  Materials. 

that  these  are  found  in  sea  or  lake  beds  but 
not  on  the  land.  Our  stone  quarries  are  on 
the  land,  and  this  brings  us  to  our  next  in- 
quiry, are  sea  beds  ever  elevated  into  dry 
land? 

Nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  Julius 
Caesar,  at  the  head  of  the  Roman  army,  in- 
vaded the  country  of  the  ancient  Britons. 
Supplies  for  his  army  were  brought  from 
Italy  in  ships,  and  Caesar  had  a  stone  wharf 
or  pier  built  in  a  sheltered  bay  of  the  Scottish 
coast  for  convenience  in  discharging  cargo. 
The  ruins  of  this  pier  are  still  visible,  but  they 
are  so  high  above  the  water  that  it  would  re- 
quire a  change  of  level  of  over  sixty  feet  to 
enable  a  Roman  galley  to  reach  the  spot  to- 
day. Here  is  plain  evidence  that  since  the 
days  of  Caesar  the  coast  of  Scotland  has  risen 
from  the  sea  over  sixty  feet  in  nineteen  hun- 
dred years. 

A  careful  series  of  measurements  con- 
ducted under  the  direction  of  the  Swedish 
government  has  established  the  fact  that 
nearly  the  whole  of  Norway  and  Sweden  is 


Sources  of  Materials.  19 

rising  slowly  above  the  ocean.  This  change 
of  level  has  been  going  on  for  thousands  of 
years  and  has  lined  both  the  Baltic  and  At- 
lantic borders  with  elevated  beach  terraces 
showing  stage  after  stage  of  successive  eleva- 
tions, all  geologically  recent.  The  rate  of 
this  elevation  is  stated  by  government  author- 
ity as  amounting  to  five  or  six  feet  in  a  cen- 
tury at  the  North  cape,  while  less  than  this 
southward.  A  still  more  impressive  group 
of  such  facts  may  be  gathered  from  our  own 
Pacific  coast.  Hundreds  of  miles  of  these 
elevated  beaches  have  been  observed  and  care- 
fully surveyed  along  the  coast  of  South  Amer- 
ica; but  we  leave  these  to  fix  our  attention 
upon  our  own  home  share  of  such  world  facts. 
For  this  purpose  we  select  four  points  of  ob- 
servation along  our  own  coast  as  exhibiting 
such  recent  elevated  sea  beds  to  a  striking 
extent. 

At  Cape  Blanco,  near  the  lighthouse,  one 
may  see  an  old  sea  beach  elevated  two  hun- 
dred and  ten  feet  above  tide  water,  in  which 
shells,  for  the  most  part  like  those  now  living 


20  Sources  of  Materials. 

in  the  neighboring  bays,  are  covered  in  the 
sand  and  mud  deposits  in  which  they  once 
lived.  Among  the  most  frequently  occurring 
of  these  were  Schizotherus,  our  large  blue 
clam,  Saxidomus  Nutali  and  Mya  Truncata. 
This  Mya  does  not  inhabit  our  waters  now, 
but  is  found  in  Alaska  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  fossil  one  of  the  elevated  beach. 
Here  would  seem  to  be  conclusive  evidence 
that  during  the  geological  horizon  to  which 
these  shells  belong  the  Pacific  ocean  buried 
them  along  its  beach  line  two  hundred  and 
ten  feet  above  its  present  reach. 

A  similar  raised  beach  may  be  seen  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Coquelle  river  on  the  hill 
above  the  town  of  Bandon.  Here  the  number 
and  variety  of  shells  found  were  still  greater, 
but  at  a  less  elevation.  Schizotherus,  Saxi- 
domus and  Mya,  like  those  of  Cape  Blanco, 
were  found  in  an  elevated  beach  one  hundred 
feet  above  present  waters,  and  so  entirely  un- 
divvturbed  as  to  leave  no  doubt  as  to  their 
having  been  deposited  there  by  the  ocean. 


e 


Sources  of  Materials.     .  21 

A  third  one  of  these  elevated  beaches  may 
be  seen  on  the  Yaquina  coast  with  similar 
recent  shells  and  sea  bed  surrounding's,  at 
an  elevation  of  eighty  feet,  finely  supplied 
with  a  rich  variety  of  recent  species  of  shells 
and  mixed  with  spruce  cones  evidently  buried 
with  these  shells  and  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  cones  of  living  species  along  the 
coast.  This  elevated  beach  at  Yaquina  merits 
careful  study.  At  the  town  of  Newport,  on 
Yaquina  bay,  a  fine  example  of  these  elevated 
beaches  may  be  seen  with  all  the  details  of 
its  history  plainly  legible.  The  bluffs  upon 
which  part  of  the  town  is  built  rise  here  to 
the  height  of  over  a  hundred  feet  above  pres- 
ent tide  water,  seventy  or  eighty  feet  of  which 
is  marine  sediment  plainly  due  to  a  broader 
and  higher  shore  line  of  the  bay  of  other  days. 
In  the  upper  part  of  this  sedimentary  portion 
of  these  beds  of  sand  and  mud  may  be  found 
imbedded  marine  shells,  many  of  which  are 
scarcely  distinguishable,  except  by  the  stain 
of  age,  from  the  shells  of  the  surrounding 
ocean.  On  the  Yaquina  coast  one  may  stand 


24  Sources  of  Materials. 

quartz  will  easily  explain  much  more,  es- 
pecially as  all  these  are  found  contained  in 
these  sediments  in  the  varying  conditions  of 
such  cementing  agents. 


fei 


si 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE  TWO  ISLANDS. 

The  geological  history  of  the  Pacific  coast 
consists  chiefly  in  the  description  of  the  slow 
elevation  of  successive  belts  of  the  bed  of  the 
ocean  into  dry  land,  and  the  progressive  addi- 
tions of  these  to  the  western  border  of  North 
America. 

These  belts  of  ocean  bed  have  not  only 
been  elevated  into  dry  land,  but  in  varying 
degrees  hardened  into  rock,  though  retain- 
ing through  all  these  changes  the  clearest 
evidence  of  their  former  sea-bed  condition. 
The  floor  of  the  sea  from  which  these  beds 
were  lifted,  was  in  favored  places  strewn  then, 
as  such  places  are  strewn  to-day,  with  shells, 
fragments  of  corals  or  of  bones,  all  bearing 
record  of  the  life  of  the  period  in  which  they 
were  covered  by  the  ocean  sediment. 


26  The  Two  Islands. 

A  minute  and  careful  study  of  such  rocky 
forms  by  some  of  the  best  minds  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  has  secured  such  results  that  stu- 
dents of  geology  may  now  speak  with  confi- 
dence of  many  great  changes  in  the  former 
life  of  the  world.  So  carefully  have  the  re- 
sults of  these  geological  studies  been  formu- 
lated that  it  is  entirely  practicable  to  tell  what 
portions  of  any  country  were  first  above  the 
seas,  and  often  to  trace  the  successive  addi- 
tions to  the  land  until  its  outline  is  recog- 
nized as  the  present  continent. 

Following  this  method  in  deciphering  the 
geological  history  of  Oregon,  one  is  carried 
back  to  a  time  when  this  region,  which  we 
now  call  our  home,  was  covered  by  the  ocean. 

In  the  natural  world  the  evident  results 
of  violent  upthrusts  of  portions  of  the  earth 
crust  are  now  accepted  as  among  the  trust- 
worthy records  of  many  lands.  These  dis- 
turbances were  sometimes  accompanied  by 
great  heat,  often  by  violent  earthquakes  and 
the  outflow  of  melted  rock,  and  sometimes 
only  by  heat  enough  to  change  the  materials 


The  Two  Islands.  27 

without  melting  them.  Oregon's  geological 
history  had  its  origin  in  just  such  a  violent 
crumpling  of  its  ancient  sea  bed,  and  when  the 
disturbance  that  caused  this  ceased,  and  quiet 
was  restored  to  the  region,  there  was  left,  as 
a  result,  two  islands  off  the  western  coast  of 
North  America. 

It  was  these  two  islands  that  grew  into 
Oregon. 

Of  these  islands,  one  occupied  the  eastern 
portion  of  what  is  now  the  Blue  Mountain 
region,  the  other  extending  over  what  is  now 
the  southwest  corner  of  the  State  of  Oregon, 
together  with  a  portion  of  Northern  Califor- 
nia, occupying  what  is  now  the  Siskiyou 
Mountain  region. 

The  violence  that  caused  the  elevation  of 
these  islands  above  the  sea  level  was  such 
that  the  original  sediments  of  which  they 
were  composed  were  changed.  If  originally 
beds  of  limestone,  these,  in  the  process  of  up- 
heaval became  marble;  if  originally  clayey  or 
argillaceous,  the  change  was  into  hardened 
slate,  and  pasty  masses  of  granite  were  forced 


28  The  Two  Islands. 

into  the  more  yielding  portions,  still  further 
altering  the  now  metamorphosed  mass. 

It  will  be  readily  seen  that  whatever  re- 
mains of  shells,  bones  or  leaf  impressions 
these  older  sediments  may  have  contained  in 
their  original  condition,  would  be  marred  in 
form,  if  not  changed  in  substance,  by  the  heat 
and  violence  through  which  they  passed,  un- 
til the  record  of  life  they  once  bore  was 
dimmed  in  portions  less  exposed  to  violence, 
and  in  others  entirely  lost. 

It  would  follow,  too,  that  after  the  violence 
of  this  unheaval  had  passed  away  and  quiet 
was  again  restored  around  the  newly  made 
islands,  marine  life  would  slowly  regain  its 
place  on  these  freshly  formed  beaches. 

In  tracing  the  early  stages  through  which 
these  islands  passed,  mention  was  made  of 
changed  slates  and  limestones  and  their  erup- 
tive accompaniments  of  the  granitic  rocks. 
So  close  are  the  points  of  resemblance  be- 
tween serpentines  from  Canyonville  and  Cow 
creek  in  Douglas  county,  and  those  from 
Canyon  City  in  Eastern  Oregon,  that  hand 


3 


The  Two  Islands.  29 

specimens  from  these  localities  are  scarcely 
distinguishable  the  one  from  the  other.  It  is, 
too,  of  like  import  that  the  altered  limestones 
of  Bridge  creek  in  the  John  Day  valley,  and 
those  from  Woodville  in  the  Rogue  River 
valley  are  easily  mistaken  for  each  other.  A 
like  resemblance  is  at  once  seen  between  the 
rich  brown  gabbros  from  the  lower  canyon 
of  Rogue  river  and  those  of  the  Blue  moun- 
tains east  of  Canyon  City.  Now,  the  places 
these  rocks  occupy  in  the  framework  of  these 
islands,  and  the  great  similarity  in  the  rocks 
themselves,  would  indicate  that  the  same  ele- 
vating forces  operating  at  the  same  time  and 
upon  similar  materials,  gave  origin  to  these 
islands. 

If  now  this  ocean  outlook  of  ours  has  been 
sketched  with  anything  like  fidelity  to  the 
facts,  we  may  rightfully  picture  to  ourselves 
these  two  islands  set  in  the  ancient  Pacific 
three  hundred  miles  apart,  with  the  ocean 
flowing  freely  between  them. 

The  steady  action  of  the  surf  upon  the 
shore  line  would  soon  crumble  the  softer  por- 


3°  The  Tcwo  Islands. 

tions  of  these  newly  elevated  materials  until  a 
wave-washed  sloping  beach  was  made  a  pro- 
gressive margin  for  each-  island. 

It  was  on  these  sloping  beaches  that  the 
life  struggle  around  these  islands  first  com- 
menced, and  on  comparing  again  the  fossil 
forms  from  each,  the  kinship  of  the  two  re- 
gions becomes  at  once  plain. 

Twenty  years  ago  Mr.  Day,  of  Eastern 
Oregon,  found  a  small  group  of  fossil  shells 
on  the  elevated  plateau  between  Canyon  City 
and  Prineville.  Two  of  these  shells,  one  of 
them  a  Pecten,  the  other  a  Pholodomya,  were 
finely  preserved  and  soon  found  their  place 
in  history. 

In  time  Shasta  county,  in  Northern  Cali- 
fornia, was  found  to  have  a  like  exposure  of 
these  Jurassic  shells. 

Still  later  Mr.  Huntington,  of  Baker 
county,  threw  a  flood  of  light  on  the  extent 
of  the  eastern  island  by  obtaining  another 
group  of  fossil  shells  which  proved  to  be  well 
defined  Jurassic,  found  twenty-five  miles  north 
of  Burns.  This  searchlight  was  soon  followed 


The  Two  Islands.  31 

by  another.  A  friendly  geological  student 
found  in  Northern  California  a  Triassic  shell, 
the  Halobia,  recognized  as  of  determining 
importance,  while  the  same  season  a  surveyor 
brought  more  of  these  shells  from  the  region 
of  Wallowa  lake,  plainly  Halobia,  too,  thus 
proving  the  twin  character  of  the  two  islands 
of  our  story. 

These  facts  readily  suggest  a  nucleus  for 
each  island  in  the  Triassic  period,  an  exten- 
sion of  these  in  the  Jurassic  and  a  continuous 
envelopment  of  both  regions  throughout  the 
Cretaceous;  for  the  Trigonia,  a  bivalve  shell 
of  Cretaceous  times,  is  abundant  in  both  re- 
gions, and  of  the  three  or  four  species  most 
abundant  on  the  coast  all  are  common  in  the 
fossil  beaches  of  both  islands.  Two  species 
of  Trigonia  may  be  seen  on  Plate  II. 

A  handsome  marine  gastropod,  allied  in 
form  to  Actionella  and  Acteonina  of  this  same 
period,  and  closely  resembling  the  land  shell 
Bulimus,  is  found  abundant  in  the  rock  of 
both  regions. 


32  The  T*wo  Islands. 

But  the  group  of  marine  fossils  that  at- 
tracts most  and  holds  the  collector's  atten- 
tion longest  is  that  of  the  chambered  cephalo- 
pods.  Of  thisline  group  the  highest  in  rank 
are  the  Ammonites,  a  division  of  cephalopods 
that  was  destined  to  become  entirely  extinct 
with  the  close  of  this  Cretaceous  period. 
These  Ammonites  were  marvelously  abundant 
along  the  beaches  of  these  islands  and  in  both 
regions  small  inferior  forms  closed  the  history 
of  their  race.  • 

In  the  earlier  periods  of  their  history  these 
islands  present  themselves  to  the  geologist  as 
twins  in  age,  in  structure  and  in  their  rela- 
tions to  the  ocean  in  which  they  were  set;  for 
throughout  the  whole  time  the  same  environ- 
ment enwrapped  both  islands.  A  notable 
separation  occurred  to  them  with  the  close 
of  the  Cretaceous  period.  A  geographical 
barrier  was  destined  to  separate  them  which 
next  calls  for  our  attention. 

Physical  geography  has  scarcely  within  its 
domain  a  more  interesting  group  of  facts  than 
that  which  goes  to  make  up  our  conception 


The  Two  Islands.  33 

of  a  mountain  range.  We  have  here  the  ne- 
cessity thrust  upon  us  of  imagining1  an  origi- 
nal, nearly  level,  ocean  bed,  lifted  to  the  form 
of  a  great  upfold  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  to 
a  height  of  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  feet 
and  extending  across  continents.  Such  an 
upfold  as  that  includes  the  Alps,  the  Cau- 
casus and  the  Himalaya  mountains  in  one  belt 
of  a  continent,  or  the  Andes,  the  Mexican 
Cordilleries  and  the  Rocky  mountains  in  an- 
other. 

After  long  ages  of  quiet  life  on  our  islands 
of  the  Pacific,  the  forces  of  the  natural  world 
commenced  the  work  of  building  another  of 
these  world  girdles,  one  whose  lines  of  prog- 
ress were  destined  to  pass  between  these  is- 
lands of  our  story  and  cast  into  separate  and 
dissimilar  currents  their  subsequent  history. 

A  colossal  sea  dyke  was  slowly  rising  from 
the  bed  of  the  ocean,  extending  from  what  we 
call  Lower  California  through  what  is  now 
Oregon  and  Washington  to  the  Aleutian  Is- 
lands, a  mere  sea  dyke  for  a  long  time,  only 
a  barrier  between  contiguous  waters;  then 


34  The  Two  Islands. 

through  other  ages  a  ridge  of  elevated  hills; 
then  later,  one  of  the  world's  mountain  won- 
ders, the  Cascade  and  Sierra  Nevada  range. 
This  new  feature  in  the  geography  of  our 
western  coast  was  destined  to  become  the 
great  shaping  force  in  its  subsequent  geology. 
For  so  great  a  working  agent,  because  of  its 
relation  to  our  narrative  and  our  consequent 
need  of  frequent  reference  to  it,  we  need  a  dis- 
tinctive name  and  shall  call  it  the  "Cascade 
Barrier." 

In  its  line  of  progress  this  barrier  passed 
between  the  islands  of  our  story  and  thence- 
forth Siskiyou  and  Shoshone  became  pro- 
gressively different  environments. 

Before  the  elevation  of  the  Cascade  bar- 
rier the  two  islands  were  the  only  controlling 
features  of  the  region  and  the  geography  was 
simple.  The  later  multiplication  of  mountain 
masses  removed  this  feature  of  simplicity,  and 
yet  in  each  case  the  once  lone  island,  later  a 
mountain  mass  towering  above  extending 
plains,  retained  its  dominance  as  a  feature  of 
the  landscape  to  such  an  extent  that  the  once 


The  T<wo  Islands.  35 

Siskiyou  island  only  changed  to  a  Siskiyou 
region,  and  the  once  Shoshone  island  to  a 
Shoshone  region.  And  further,  as  the  later 
environment  of  the  one  was  entirely  marine, 
and  of  the  other  entirely  fresh  water,  it  will 
be  most  convenient  to  treat  the  ongrowth  of 
the  Siskiyou  island  as  including  all  west  of 
the  Cascade  barrier,  and  all  the  region  east  of 
that  barrier  as  the  successive  development  of 
the  Shoshone,  designating  one  as  the  Sho- 
shone belt,  the  other  as  the  Siskiyou  belt. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  SISKIYOU  ISLAND. 

It  will  be  remembered  it  was  stated  that 
when  this  island  was  first  elevated  from  the 
sea  bed,  the  movement  was  accompanied  by 
so  much  of  violent  force  and  consequent  heat 
that  the  limestones  of  the  mass  were  turned 
to  marble,  the  argillaceous  sediments  into 
slates,  and  between  and  through  these,  beds 
of  granite  and  other  eruptive  rocks  were 
forced  into  the  positions  they  now  occupy  in 
the  mass. 

It  will  be  borne  in  mind,  too,  that  the  up- 
lifted nucleus  of  the  island  was  crowded  to 
the  surface  with  so  much  of  heat  and  pressure 
as  to  destroy  the  outlines  of  many  of  the 
organic  forms  it  contained. 

The  island  once  elevated,  the  resistance 
to  this  crushing  force  ceased,  and  a  long 
period  of  quiet  succeeded. 


e 

x 

s! 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  37 

It  is  just  here  at  the  dawn  of  a  new  chap- 
ter in  the  life  record  of  the  region,  that  the 
geological  history  of  this  Siskiyou  island 
opens  to  the  collector  of  fossils  its  richest  rec- 
ords. Slowly  the  drifting  currents  of  the  sur- 
rounding ocean  brought  to  the  shores  of  this 
newly  elevated  island  the  eggs  and  seeds  of  sea 
and  land,  to  open  there  into  life  under  new 
conditions  and  environment.  The  beaches 
upon  which  these  lodged  were  rough  and  in- 
hospitable. The  sea  shells  that  just  struggled 
for  life,  are  found  strangely  cradled  among 
rough  sharp  pebbles,  for  soil  and  mud  were 
scarce  as  yet. 

The  mass  of  conglomerate  rock  photo- 
graphed on  Plate  III  finely  describes  this 
opening  stage  of  a  new  geological  period. 
It  is  from  the  base  of  the  newer  deposits 
around  the  island.  The  pebbles  it  contains  are 
fragments  of  the  older,  the  changed  rocks  of 
the  island,  broken  off  from  its  cliffs,  worn  par- 
tially smooth  by  the  tossings  of  the  surf, 
mixed  with  fragments  of  shells  and  then 
cemented  into  this  conglomerate.  The  shell 


38  The  Siskiyov  Island. 

most  abundant  along  this  ancient  coast  line 
was  a  Trigonia,  one  entire  valve  of  which 
may  be  seen  in  our  illustration,  surrounded 
by  hundreds  of  fragments  of  others  broken 
by  the  surf,  then  covered  by  scanty  sediment 
and  so  assigned  a  permanent  place  in  this 
rock.  These  shells  were  multiplied  and  others 
were  rapidly  added,  until  marine  life  filled 
every  available  nook  of  the  whole  coast  line 
of  the  island.  The  geological  period  whose 
beginning  is  thus  marked,  was  the  Cretaceous. 
That  is  to  say,  the  period  at  which  these  shells 
lived  was  that  in  which  the  chalk  of  France 
and  England  was  deposited. 

In  other  words,  at  the  time  when  the  great 
body  of  Europe  was  yet  under  the  deep  sea 
that  was  slowly  depositing  in  its  profoundest 
depths  this  chalk,  the  far-off  Siskiyou  island 
was  surrounded  by  this  ancient  sea  beach,  on 
which  these  shells  struggled  for  life.  Later 
deposits  on  this  beach  as  seen  in  layers  a  few 
feet  higher  and  therefore  more  recent,  show 
a  notable  change  of  material  as  well  as  fossil 
contents. 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  39 

The  newer  life  of  plant  and  animal  adds 
fresh  material  to  the  shore  line  deposit,  and 
as  a  result  the  smaller  particles  of  the  rock 
show  increasingly  abundant  other  life  than 
that  of  the  coarser  shells.  Sheltered  bays  lent 
their  protection  to  fragile  forms  of  life,  and 
these  so  multiplied  that  the  whole  mass  of 
the  rock  becomes  eloquent  in  its  record,  for 
then,  as  now,  marine  life  most  abounded  in 
such  sheltered  places  of  the  beach. 

The  chambered  shells,  represented  by  the 
Nautilus  and  the  Ammonite,  are  found  widely 
distributed  in  the  rocks  of  the  Siskiyou  island. 
The  Nautilus  survived  all  the  changes  of  the 
period  and  passed  on  to  later  times  along  the 
newly  formed  western  coast,  while  its  cousin, 
the  Ammonite,  of  more  complex  internal 
structure,  became  extinct  with  the  close  of 
the  Cretaceous.  Three  of  this  Ammonite 
family  from  Siskiyou  island  are  shown  on 
Plate  IV.  The  causes  which  brought  about 
its  extinction  seem  to  have  been  connected 
with  the  complexity  of  its  structure  rather 
than  with  its  environment,  for  it  drops  out  of 


40  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

geological  history  all  over  the  world  at  the 
close  of  the  Cretaceous  period. 

Bivalves  of  the,  Venus  and  Mactra  families 
were  also  abundant,  and  smaller  shells  in  in- 
creasing abundance  filled  those  old  beaches 
with  beauty  and  wealth  of  scientific  materials. 

In  our  narrative  of  the  greater  geological 
changes  along  the  Pacific  coast  we  found  the 
gathering  forces  of  a  great  geological  revolu- 
tion were  taking  form  and  direction,  destined 
to  change  the  whole  western  face  of  the  con- 
tinent. The  colossal  sea  dyke  referred  to  in 
the  previous  chapter  as  the  Cascade  barrier 
was  slowly  rising  from  the  bed  of  the  ocean, 
its  line  of  uplift  falling  a  little  eastward  of  our 
Siskiyou  island  and  ultimately  resulting  in 
connecting  that  island  with  the  main  land. 
The  point  was  reached  of  the  permanent  sepa- 
ration of  the  two.  islands  by  the  upfold  of  the 
Cascade  barrier — the  Shoshone  island  becom- 
ing enclosed  in  the  stretch  of  land-locked  wat- 
ers east  of  the  barrier,  the  Siskiyou  island  con- 
tinuing in  its  marine  environment. 


e 

^ 

s 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  41 

This  change  having  occurred  at  the  close 
of  the  Cretaceous  period  the  continuation  of 
the  history  would  open  upon  Eocene  times. 
The  geological  sediments  of  these  Eocene 
times  west  of  the  Cascade  barrier  were  those 
of  shoaling  waters,  chiefly  sand  stones  and 
often  abounding  in  finely  preserved  marine 
fossils.  An  extensive  belt  of  this  rock  not 
covered  by  any  later  deposit  may  be  seen 
reaching  from  Denmark,  a  few  miles  north 
of  Cape  Blanco,  to  a  point  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Coquelle  river,  reappearing  again 
south  of  the  entrance  to  Coos  bay,  where  fine 
exposures  of  their  fossils  are  found,  among 
which  are  well  preserved  Cardita  planicosta, 
that  may  be  seen  near  the  lighthouse  at  Cape 
Arago,  in  rock  tilted  to  an  angle  of  sixty 
degrees.  The  rock  reappears  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Umpqua  and  forms  the  line  of  picturesque 
bluffs  along  both  banks  of  that  river  to  Scotts- 
burg,  and  is  again  extensively  exposed  along 
Elk  creek  to  Drain. 

Further  north  the  Eocene  reappears 
around  Philomath  and  Corvallis.  Here  again 


42  The  Siskiyoa  Island. 

one  realizes  the  great  thickness  of  those 
Eocene  beds,  for  in  spite  of  the  evidence  these 
hills  furnish  of  long  continued  deep  weather- 
wearing,  they  present  to-day  a  feature  of 
striking  magnitude.  In  several  places  among 
these  Benton  county  hills  Cardita  planicosta 
attest  the  Eocene  age  of  these  rocks. 

Another  exposure  of  the  fossils  of  this 
great  belt  of  Eocene  is  found  near  Albany. 
A  low  range  of  hills  tends  eastward  from  a 
point  north  of  Con-allis,  compelling  the  Wil- 
lamette to  run  eastward  for  ten  miles  or  more. 
Near  Albany  this  range  contains  our  charac- 
teristic Eocene  shells  in  fine  condition  and 
goodly  numbers.  This  is  a  mere  off-shoot  of 
the  main  belt  which  continues  on  unbroken  to 
speak  of  long  continued  uniform  history. 

At  Astoria  the  Columbia  river  cuts  into 
this  Eocene  belt  and  exposes  another  Eocene 
fossil,  the  chambered  shell  Aturia,  a  beautiful 
fossil,  and  important  because  it  proves  the 
rock  containing  it  to  be  Eocene. 

The  magnitude  of  these  Eocene  deposits, 
estimated  in  the  light  of  what  one  sees  along 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  43 

the  coast  line  from  Cape  Blanco  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Umpqua,  strikes  one  as  very  great, 
while  the  uniformity  of  their  materials  and 
the  abundance  of  their  fossil  remains  alike 
speak  of  long  continued  uniform  history. 

Anyone  may  verify  these  convictions  by 
examining  the  thickness,  uniformity  and 
abundant  life  of  these  rpcks  on  the  North 
Umpqua  twenty  miles  east  of  Roseburg,  the 
thickness  of  deposit  along  both  banks  of  the 
Umpqua  and  Elk  creek  from  Elkton  to  the 
ocean,  and  at  Cape  Arago  where  again  they 
are  richly  fossiliferous. 

Let  it  then  be  accepted  that  this  whole 
region  north  of  Siskiyou  island  enjoyed  a 
long  period  of  comparative  quiet  after  the 
Cascade  revolution.  But  the  completion  of 
the  plan  of  North  America  calls  for  another 
world  belt,  and  it  comes,  this  time  as  another 
upfold  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  beginning 
again  under  the  sea  bed  and  reaching  from 
California  to  Alaska.  Its  line  falls  upon  our 
island  of  Siskiyou,  and  continues  northward 
and  southward — a  sea  dyke  in  its  early  stages, 


44  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

and  later  a  range  of  hills,  and  still  later  a  range 
of  mountains — the  Coast  range  of  the  future 
Pacific  coast.  It  will  at  once  strike  the  reader 
that  this  new  event  has  in  it  several  points  of 
likeness,  both  in  itself  and  in  its  results,  to 
the  elevation  of  the  Cascade  barrier  already 
described. 

This  conclusion  is  entirely  just,  for  both 
of  these  upcrumplings  became  permanent 
ranges  of  mountains;  both  cut  off  perma- 
nently portions  of  the  Pacific  ocean,  changing 
these  to  inland  belts  of  water,  later  to  drain- 
age troughs  and  ultimately  into  valleys;  and 
in  each  case  one  of  our  ancient  islands  be- 
came the  dominant  feature  of  the  region  thus 
added  to  the  land,  the  region  east  of  the  Cas- 
cade barrier  dominated  by  the  island  of  Sho- 
shone,  the  region  between  the  Cascade  and 
the  Coast  range  dominated  by  the  island  of 
Siskiyou. 

Inasmuch  as  the  upfold  along  the  coast 
line  is  apparently  the  final  one  in  the  struc- 
ture of  North  America,  and  as  two  others 
of  like  structural  character  preceded  this,  a 


s 
2 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  45 

brief  consideration  of  the  apparent  causes 
that  underlie  these  surface  movements  may 
not  be  out  of  place. 

The  first  of  the  series  within  the  range  of 
our  subject  was  that  which  built  up  the  Rocky 
mountains;  the  second  that  which  -forced  up 
the  Cascade  mountains;  the  third,  this  latest 
one,  the  elevation  of  the  Coast  range. 

In  all  these  movements  the  work  was  be- 
gun in  the  crumpling  up  of  the  bed  of  the 
sea.  In  proof  of  this,  one  has  only  to  point 
out  the  fact  common  to  all  three  regions,  that 
the  sea  mud,  now  hardened  into  rock  and  ele- 
vated to  the  shoulders  of  these  mountains  and 
constituting  the  bulk  of  the  mountain  mass, 
abounds  in  sea  shells,  many  of  which  lie  ap- 
parently undisturbed  in  the  very  mud  banks 
in  which  they  lived.  Another  fact  common  to 
all  three  regions,  is  the  evidence  they  furnish 
of  the  great  force  and  heat  that  accompanied 
their  elevation.  This  is  seen  in  such  portions 
of  the  masses  as  offered  most  resistance  to  this 
elevating  force,  changing  in  such  places,  as 
by  fire,  the  very  structure  of  the  mass. 


46  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

These  facts  and  the  great  extent  over 
which  they  prevail  seem  to  prove  a  cause  at 
least  as  extensive  as  the  miles  they  cover. 

We  have  now  opened  before  as  a  new 
chapter  in  the  geological  history  of  our  coast, 
the  framework  of  the  new  order  of  things 
traced  in  bold  features. 

Its  greater  features  are  two  fold;  first,  a 
mountain  range  lifted  from  the  bed  of  the 
ocean  nearly  a  hundred  miles  westward  of  the 
Cascade  barrier;  second,  a  related  trough 
between  these  two  extending  along  the  entire 
length  of  the  coast  from  Southern  California 
to  the  Alaskan  peninsula. 

Throughout  this  extent  the  unity  of  the 
elevated  mass  receives  recognition  under  the 
name  of  the  Coast  range.  The  unity  of  the 
related  trough  has  not  received  a  name  to 
cover  its  whole  length,  yet  a  moment's  in- 
spection will  show  the  same  unity  among  the 
parts  of  the  trough  that  is  so  carefully  noted 
in  the  uplifts.  The  San  Joaquin  and  Sacra- 
mento valleys  of  California,  the  Willamette 
valley  of  Oregon,  the  trough  of  Puget  sound, 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  47 

through  Queen  Charlotte's  sound — all  these 
are  but  parts  of  the  one  continuous  trough 
that  separates  the  Cascade  range  on  the  east 
from  the  Coast  range  on  the  west. 

The  incompleteness  of  this  new  coast  bar- 
rier was  such  that  the  ocean  water  had  for  a 
long  time  free  access  to  the  Oregon  part  of 
the  depression,  now  the  Willamette  valley. 

The  unity  of  movement,  shown  in  the  lines 
of  continuance  of  the  mountain  range  and 
the  trough  between  this  and  the  Cascade 
range,  presents  several  breaks;  but  these 
broken  links  of  the  chain  are  explained  by 
the  fact  that  the  imperfection  is  always  where 
the  new  line  of  upheaval  crosses  an  older  up- 
fold  of  the  crust. 

In  proof  of  this,  notice  that  the  California 
part  of  the  trough  is  interrupted  by  the  older 
uplifts  over  against  the  Siskiyou  region;  that 
the  trough  which  begins  again  in  Southern 
Oregon  is  interrupted  by  cross  lines  of  earlier 
upfolds,  disturbing  its  development  till  it 
crosses  the  Calapooia  mountains,  after 
which,  the  trough,  as  the  Willamette  valley, 


48  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

regains  its  normal  relations  to  the  wider  out- 
line of  the  continent  and  passes  on  as  the 
Cowlitz  valley.  Here  at  the  head  of  this  val- 
ley occurs  another  short  break  in  an  old 
Eocene  mass,  and  then  the  trough  falls  into 
line  again  in  the  depression  of  Puget  sound. 
A  fainter  continuance  of  this  trough  may  be 
traced  northward  through  Queen  Charlotte's 
sound  and  even  farther  on. 

The  geographical  extent  of  these  changes, 
together  with  an  approximate  parallelism  of 
the  working  forces  that  produced  them, 
would  seem  to  indicate  a  world  wide  cause 
modified  along  the"  Pacific  slope  by  the  coast 
conditions,  but  unquestionably  originating 
from  a  continued  shrinkage  of  the  crust  of  the 
earth.  The  earliest  yielding  to  the  force  pro- 
duced the  Rocky  mountains,  the  next  the 
Cascades,  and  the  latest  the  Coast  range. 
These  were  so  many  upfolds  of  the  shrinking 
crust,  each  with  its  correlated  troughs  or 
downfolds  resembling  the  shrinkage  on  the 
surface  of  a  last  year's  apple. 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  49 

This  latest  of  these  continental  upfolds,  the 
Coast  range,  having  taken  its  place  among 
world  facts,  an  outline  of  its  geological  rela- 
tions will  be  important. 

At  the  opening  of  the  Miocene  period  the 
coast  upfold  was  only  a  line  of  islands,  the 
geological  materials  of  which  were  the  re- 
cently elevated  belts  of  Eocene.  Between 
these  islands  were  open  passages  through 
which  ebbed  and  flowed  the  ocean  tides,  while 
the  enclosed  belt  of  water  between  the  isl- 
ands and  the  Cascade  range  was  wide  and 
deep,  a  body  of  water  similar  to  Queen  Char- 
lotte's sound  of  to-day.  It  was  on  the  inner 
slopes  of  this  sound  that  the  marine  waters 
of  the  period  deposited  their  rich  and  varied 
record  of  the  life  of  the  times. 

In  this  way  the  outline  of  our  modern 
Willamette  valley  was  first  blocked  out,  the 
framework  of  which  still  remains.  Its  rim 
has  varied  in  altitude,  its  bed  has  varied  in 
depth,  but  its  original  outline  abides. 

Its  latest  western  border,  the  Coast  range 
of  mountains,  was  not  entire  in  the  period  we 


50  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

are  describing,  but  was  pierced  by  straits 
through  which  the  ocean  freely  flowed  till  it 
washed  the  slopes  of  the  Cascade  hills.  This 
free  inflow  of  the  ocean  kept  the  enclosed  body 
of  water  salt  enough  to  promote  the  health 
and  abundance  of  its  sea  shells,  and  no  region 
of  Miocene  times  has  kept  a  fuller  record  of 
its  life.  And  if  now  we  are  led  to  ask  where 
the  Miocene  agencies  found  the  materials  for 
these  later  upbuildings  of  hills,  we  may  re- 
member that  the  great  upfold  we  now  call 
the  Coast  range,  once  in  place,  settled  into 
two  sorts  of  materials,  a  denser,  heavier  por- 
tion that  formed  the  mud-sills,  and  a  lighter 
topping  lifted  skyward.  It  was  the  work  of 
Miocene  weather  wear  to  form  the  skyward 
portion  into  graceful  drapery  for  our  coming 
valley.  In  short,  Miocene  winds  and  rain 
transported  these  looser  Miocene  materials 
into  gentle  inland  slopes,  to  be  in  time  cov- 
ered by  the  tides  of  the  ocean  and  stocked 
with  sea  shells  until  it  became  a  grand  Mio- 
cene aquarium. 


The  Siskiyou  Island.  51 

In  the  deposits  of  sediments  along  the  in- 
ner slopes  of  this  basin,  the  changed  remains 
of  which  now  border  the  Willamette  valley 
as  thick  beds  of  rock,  aggregating  in  some 
localities  hundreds  of  feet  in  vertical  thickness, 
may  be  traced  the  progress  of  this  Miocene 
work,  in  many  places  marked  by  abundance  of 
marine  shells  in  the  very  sands  and  mud  flats 
in  which  they  lived,  but  all  now  changed  to 
rock.  Time  has  worn  away  the  less  dense 
surface  layers  of  this  varied  deposit,  but  the 
denser  lower  layers  of  it  have  in  different  de- 
grees resisted  this  wear  and  formed  the  foot 
hills  in  nearly  the  entire  circuit  of  the  present 
valley  from  the  Columbia  river  to  the  Cala- 
pooia  mountains. 

A  fine  exposure  of  these  Miocene  sedi- 
ments may  be  seen  in  the  excavated  streets 
of  Astoria,  resting  on  a  like  exposure  of  the 
underlying  Eocene,  both  groups  of  fossils 
finely  preserved,  often  enclosed  in  concretions 
which  apparently  formed  around  the  decay- 
ing shells  in  quiet,  deep  waters.  Sometimes 
the  enclosed  fossil  is  a  crab,  and  in  the  shales 


52  The  Siskiyou  Island. 

of  the  underlying  Eocene,  is  a  chambered 
shell,  a  near  cousin  of  the  Nautilus,  the  Aturia, 
of  fine  form  and  well  preserved.  Another  in- 
teresting exposure  of  these  Miocene  fossils 
may  be  observed  at  Westport,  a  few  miles 
above  Astoria.  The  fossils  here  will  be  found 
at  the  base  of  the  hill  south  of  the  landing 
and  will  be  found  to  closely  repeat  the  forms 
at  Astoria. 

Still  farther  up  the  river,  at  the  base  of 
the  foot  hills  back  of  Scappoose,  these  Mio- 
cene fossils  are  again  seen,  and  here  they 
underlie  a  good  deal  of  volcanic  rock,  but  on 
crossing  over  the  mountains  into  Tualatin 
Plains  the  Miocene  shells  are  again  found  in 
their  native  sand  stone.  Southwest  of  For- 
est Grove  where  Coast  mountain  streams  cut 
through  the  Miocene  foot  hills,  the  fossils  are 
again  very  abundant  and  very  fine— 1all  Mio- 
cene. South  of  this,  bordering  Wapato  lake, 
they  appear  again  in  shales,  and  this  border 
land  of  the  Miocene  may  be  traced  by  its  fos- 
sils to  the  head  of  the  valley  at  Eugene  where 
they  appear  in  great  beauty  and  abundance. 


The  Stsktyoa  Island.  53 

Passing  northward  on  the  east  or  Cascade 
.side  of  the  valley,  one  strikes  these  Miocene 
beds  at  Willoughby's,  West  Point,  Peterson's 
Butte,  Knox's  Butte,  in  the  bed  of  the  San- 
tiam  east  of  Knox's  Butte,  and  so  on  till  we 
reach  Salem,  whose  hills  are  all  fossiliferous. 

The  later  geological  record  of  the  Willam- 
ette valley  is  such  as  to  suggest  an  explana- 
tion of  its  facts.  The  theory  is  that  through- 
out the  next  geological  period,  the  Pliocene, 
the  whole  region  remained  above  water  and 
so  left  no  record;  for  if  it,  or  any  considerable 
part  of  it,  was  covered  by  water  during  Plio- 
•cene  times,  the  camel  and  other  Pliocene 
mammals,  whose  remains  are  so  abundant  in 
Eastern  Oregon,  would  be  found  fossil  here. 
But  later  in  the  Champlain  period  it  shared 
in  the  general  land  subsidence  that  then 
marked  the  whole  north  temperate  zone.  The 
Willamette  valley,  the  Yakima  valley  and  the 
Walla  Walla  region  were  all  again  covered 
with  water  to  the  depth  of  several  hundred 
feet.  It  is  to  the  Western  Oregon  share  of 
these  elevated  waters  that  the  name  Willam- 
ette sound  has  recently  been  given. 


CHAPTER  V. 
THE  WILLAMETTE  SOUND. 

The  desire  to  study  some  of  the  evidences 
of  the  more  recent  changes  of  level  along  the 
coast  of  Oregon  and  Washington,  with  a  view 
to  compare  and  if  possible  to  connect  them 
with  evidences  of  like  changes  in  the  interior, 
led  to  a  visit  to  Shoalwater  bay,  an  inlet  of 
the  coast  a  few  miles  north  of  the  Columbia 
river.  June  on  our  northern  coast  is  a  pleas- 
ant season  for  such  trips,  and  ours  received 
its  full  measure  of  help  from  such  accessories 
as  bright  sunshine  and  pure  air  above  us,  un- 
measured wealth  of  form,  color  and  fragrance 
below. 

The  ride  from  the  cape  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Columbia  to  Shoalwater  bay  is  one  of  the 
finest  in  the  country.  The  road  for  the  greater 
part  is  along  the  ocean  beach,  always  strewn 
with  the  numerous  wrecks  of  life  cast  upon  its 


The  Willamette  Sound.  55 

sands  and  often  presenting  to  the  naturalist 
objects  of  rare  interest.  An  abrupt  turn  of 
the  road  inland  ends  this  finest  of  beach  drives 
at  ten  or  twelve  miles  from  the  cape.  A  short 
distance  through  woods  of  spruce  and  pine, 
thickly  undergrown  with  a  rich  variety  of 
flowering  shrubs,  and  the  road  opens  upon  a 
fine  view  of  Shoalwater  bay  at  the  pleasant  lit- 
tle town  of  Oysterville.  The  general  outline 
of  the  bay  is  in  sight  from  this  point.  The 
bluffs  that  define  its  shores  appear,  seen  north- 
ward, fifteen  or  eighteen  miles  away,  and  in 
the  direction  of  its  southern  extension,  ten 
or  twelve  miles.  At  intervals  along  this  whole 
shore  line,  one  can  plainly  discern  what  in  the 
distance  appear  as  land  slides,  but  on  nearer 
approach  prove  to  be  portions  of  the  bluff 
shore  undermined  by  the  storm-surf,  and  in 
their  present  form  showing  fine  sections  of 
the  strata  of  which  they  are  composed.  On 
examining  these  more  closely  one  sees  a  bank, 
not  of  common  earth,  but  disposed  in  strati- 
fied layers  of  sediment,  once  evidently  con- 
tinuous over  the  whole  region  and  of  nearly 


56  The  Willamette  Sound. 

uniform  thickness,  now  worn  away  above  into 
a  rolling  surface,  yet  showing  everywhere  a 
fine  persistence  in  the  old  water  lines  that 
ruled  its  formation.  Buried  in  this  mass  of 
sediment,  and  occasionally  cropping  out  in 
exposed  sections,  are  vast  beds  of  sea  shells. 
So  completely  do  these  represent  the  life  now 
around  them  that  when  an  apparently  excep- 
tional form  does  appear,  memory  at  once  re- 
calls having  seen  it  somewhere  on  the  coast. 
And  yet,  identical  in  species  as  these  shells 
unquestionably  are  with  those  now  living  in 
the  surrounding  waters,  the  two  sets  of  condi- 
tions are  separated  by  the  whole  import  of  the 
term  "fossil."  The  waters  that  buried  there 
those  fossil  shells,  and  covered  them  with  one 
hundred  or  more  vertical  feet  of  ocean  sedi- 
ment, were  waters  that  so  defined  our  north- 
ern coast  as  to  give  it  a  far  different  outline 
from  that  of  its  present  geography. 

In  some  of  these  bluff  exposures  their  past 
record  is  read  in  masses  of  buried  forest  trees 
— trunk,  leaves  and  seed  so  buried  in  clay  and 
so  well  preserved  that  the  spruce  cone,  fragile 


s 

a 


The  Willamette  Sound.  57 

at  all  times,  is  scarcely  discernible  from  one  of 
last  year's  fruitage  drifting  in  the  neighboring 
waters.  From  these  vegetable  remains,  as 
from  those  of  the  shell  fish,  the  same  truths' 
are  taught,  for  the  trees  are  the  same  in  kind 
as  those  growing  on  the  bluffs  one  hundred 
feet  above  them,  while  the  waters  that  covered 
them  there  with  one  hundred  feet  of  sedi- 
ment have  passed  away.  The  fossil  story  then 
that  may  be  read  here  is  linked  to  our  own 
times  by  the  sameness  of  vegetable  and  ani- 
mal life,  and  separated  from  ours  by  the  pass- 
ing away  of  the  agencies  by  which  the  rec- 
ords were  written.  It  is  useless  to  ask,  How 
long  ago?  There  is  no  chronological  record 
legible  here.  Future  discoveries  may  connect 
these  things  with  human  story.  We  may  not 
attempt  this  now. 

The  lowest  marine  remains  of  these  bluffs 
plainly  prove  that  when  they  lived  the  waters 
around  them  were  at,  or  near,  their  present 
level.  They  are  species  that  love  shoal  water 
and  they  are  in  place  where  found.  The 
oyster  is  very  abundant  among  them,  and 


58  The  Willamette  Sound. 

the  shells  of  most  of  them  are  neither  broken 
apart  nor  water-worn  as  they  would  be  if 
drifted  here  from  some  other  locality.  They 
evidently  lie  here  as  fossils  on  the  same  bed 
they  occupied  while  living,  and  oysters  then, 
as  now,  rarely  bed  in  waters  more  than  a  few 
feet  in  depth.  The  common  cockle — another 
lover  of  shoal  water — is  also  abundant  among 
these  remains,  and,  like  the  oyster,  lies  fossil 
where  it  lived,  the  opposite  valves  often  occu- 
pying the  very  positions,  relatively,  that  they 
held  while  living.  So,  too,  with  the  mem- 
bers of  the  clam  family;  whether  Mactra  or 
Solen  or  Venus,  all  are  evidently  in  their  na- 
tive beds  where  they  lived  and  died.  We 
conclude  that  when  these  shell  fish  lived,  the 
surrounding  waters  held  nearly  their  present 
level. 

Another  truth  plainly  taught  in  these 
stratified  bluffs  is  this:  the  waters  here  be- 
came afterward  much  higher,  or  speaking 
more  exactly,  the  land  became  much  lower. 
There  must  have  been  a  change  of  more  than 
one  hundred  feet,  for  a  stratified  sediment  of 


The  Willamette  Sound.  59 

one  hundred  feet  in  thickness  as  now  seen  in 
some  of  these  bluffs — that,  for  instance,  near 
the  North  river — would  require  more  than 
that  depth  of  water  to  place  it  there;  and  this 
sediment  is  so  fine  in  material  as  to  warrant 
the  conviction  that  it  once  existed  evenly  dis- 
tributed over  the  whole  region,  bay  and  all. 
The  upper  layers,  too,  have  in  them  the  finest 
materials  and  the  fewest  fossils;  both  facts  in- 
dicating increasing  depth  of  water  as  the  up- 
per beds  were  deposited. 

Yet  another  plain  truth  is  legibly  written 
here — the  changes  indicated  in  depth  of  water 
over  the  place  were  quiet  changes.  Any  sud- 
den catastrophe  would  have  signs  of  violence 
and  consequent  strong  current,  but  nothing 
of  the  kind  appears  here.  The  fragile  cone 
of  the  spruce  tree  period,  buried  in  that  sedi- 
ment, is  found  to-day  among  these  shells  as 
little  marred  by  time  as  the  shells  themselves. 
The  line  of  deposit  along  the  sheltered  bay, 
just  as  it  was  at  its  deepest  stage  of  water, 
is  now  as  unbroken  as  it  was  then.  Neither 
the  violence  of  earthquake  nor  the  suddenness 


60  The  Willamette  Sound. 

of  deluge  has  left  any  trace  of  such  agency 
to  disturb  the  conviction  one  feels  that  the 
changes  indicated  there  were  quiet  ones,  cov- 
ering a  long  period  of  time,  yet  scarcely  dis- 
turbing the  quiet  order  of  life  over  which  they 
presided. 

That  every  inlet  on  our  northern  coast 
has  its  group  of  facts  of  like  import  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  Our  line  of  thought  needs  only 
those  that  mark  its  extension  to  the  Columbia 
river,  and  there  the  lessons  gleaned  from  the 
bluffs  of  Shoalwater  bay  reappear  in  all  their 
clearness.  A  fine  instance  of  this  is  seen  in 
a  bluff  on  the  old  Whealdon  farm,  just  inside 
the  cape.  Several  others  may  be  seen  along 
the  streams  that  fall  into  Young's  bay,  on  the 
south  shore  of  the  river,  and  just  back  of  As- 
toria. All  these  contain  remains  of  animal 
and  vegetable  life  linked  to  our  shores  and 
forests  of  to-day  by  identity  of  species,  and 
separated  in  our  minds  from  the  present  order 
of  things  by  the  conviction  that  the  agencies 
which  placed  them  there  have  passed  away. 


fe 


e 


The  Willamette  Sound.  61 

In  all  this  we  are  obviously  studying  only 
the  lower  limit  of  this  latest  of  Oregon's  geo- 
logical changes.  Where  shall  we  look  for 
its  upper  limit?  In  other  words,  how  high 
did  those  waters  rise  above  the  present  sea 
level?  We  might  look  for  traces  of  its  upper 
reaches  in  the  remains  of  old  sea  beaches-  in 
elevated  places  on  the  abrupt  slopes  of  the 
hills  along  the  coast,  but  in  such  exposures 
old  beach  lines  are  but  rarely  preserved 
against  the  storms  of  a  thousand  winters,  still 
less  against  those  of  tens  of  thousands.  To 
find  them  and  their  records  plainly  legible  we 
must  look  to  more  sheltered  localities  inland. 
It  will  help  us  a  good  deal  in  our  search  for 
such  shore  lines  of  the  interior  to  carry  with 
us  a  theory  that  will  point  out  the  possible 
limits  within  which  they  may  reasonably  be 
sought.  Will  the  facts  we  have  gathered  from 
Shoalwater  bay  and  the  lower  Columbia  war- 
rant us  in  forming  such  a  theory?  Let  us  see. 

Stratified  sediment  of  a  hundred  feet  in 
vertical  thickness — finer  far  in  its  upper  lay- 
ers than  in  those  lower,  and  in  its  upper  layers 


62  The  Willamette  Sound. 

entirely  devoid  of  marine  remains,  while  the 
lower  ones  are  densely  crowded  with  them — 
plainly  indicate  shoal  water  to  begin  the 
work,  and  deep  water  afterward  over  its  high- 
est layers.  But  the  sediment  itself  in  one 
hundred  feet  or  more,  and  deep  water  over  its 
upper  surface,  equal  to  the  requirements  of  its 
facts,  could  not  be  less  than  another  hundred 
feet,  thus  making  a  total  depth  of  at  least 
two  hundred  feet  above  the  present  water 
level.  Let  then,  a  depth  of  two  hundred  feet 
be  our  theory,  and  with  this  let  us  pass  inland 
for  facts  to  confirm  it  if  true,  to  reject  it  if 
false;  and  if  confirmed,  to  trace  by  its  help 
the  outlines  of  that  fine  old  Willamette  sound 
that  may  in  the  days  of  the  Mammoth  and 
the  Broad  Faced  Ox  have  welcomed  to  its 
scores  of  sheltered  harbors,  the  ancient 
hunter  who,  in  his  canoe,  if  he  had  one,  floated 
one  hundred  feet  or  more  above  the  present 
altitude  of  the  church  spires  of  Portland  and 
Salem. 

But  as  we  pass  along,  let  us  in  imagina- 
tion reconstruct  the  fine  inland  sea  that  two 


The  Willamette  Sound.  63 

hundred  feet  of  elevation  in  the  waters  of  the 
Columbia  must  have  made.  We  have  first 
the  noble  entrance,  like  that  of  the  Straits 
of  Fuca,  extending  from  the  present  site  of 
Astoria  to  that  of  St.  Helens,  eighty  miles  or 
more  in  length,  varying  from  five  to  twenty 
miles  in  width  and  over  two  hundred  feet  in 
depth.  At  St.  Helens  it  spreads  out  into  a 
broad  inland  sea,  extending  from  the  Scap- 
poose  mountains  to  the  elevated  land  east  of 
the  Willamette  valley.  Like  the  Puget  sound 
of  today,  whose  general  outlines  this  old  Wil- 
lamette sound  strangely  resembles,  it  was  in 
its  southern  extension — over  the  present  val- 
ley, among  elevated  islands,  deep  channels, 
and  land-locked  bays  reaching  from  the  Scap- 
poose  mountains  to  Spencer's  butte — that  it 
spread  out  its  greatest  wealth  of  scenic  beauty. 
Our  theory  would  make  it  cover  the  whole  of 
the  lower  levels  through  which  the  Willamette 
now  flows. 

Let  us  trace  this  grand  water  system  east- 
ward along  the  present  course  of  the  Colum- 
bia river. 


64  The  Willamette  Sound. 

We  started,  it  will  be  remembered,  from 
the  capes  with  a  theoretic  elevation  of  the 
waters  two  hundred  feet  above  their  present 
level.  The  fall  of  the  river,  from  the  Lower 
Cascades  to  the  ocean,  may  be  stated  at  forty 
feet;  the  fall  through  the  five  miles  of  cas- 
cades, at  thirty-five  feet.  Above  this  there 
are  forty  or  fifty  miles  of  narrow  gorge 
through  a  mountain  range,  with  slopes  too 
steep  for  preserving  old  shore  lines  and 
through  which  the  river  falls  twenty  feet  more. 
Here  we  find  the  first  open  space  east  of  the 
Cascade  mountains,  in  which  the  waters  of 
that  period — if  two  hundred  feet  higher  at 
the  capes  than  they  now  are — would  have  had 
an  elevation  above  the  present  river  level  of 
one  hundred  and  five  feet.  There  was  at  this 
place  a  lake-like  extension  of  the  river  seven 
or  eight  miles  wide  and  fifteen  to  twenty  long, 
and  into  this  a  semicircular  system  of  streams, 
six  in  number,  brought  a  continued  supply 
of  sediment — -sand,  clay  and  gravel — and 
buried,  year  after  year,  in  the  strata  along  the 
margin  of  that  lake,  the  record  of  the  pass- 


The  Willamette  Sound.  65 

ing  events  of  the  times.  Now,  manifestly,  at 
whatever  level  we  may  here  find  elevated 
beach  marks,  with  buried  remains  at  all  cor- 
responding with  those  with  which  we  started, 
there  we  shall  find  the  figures  to  correct  the 
theory  with  which  we  set  out. 

Within  a  few  miles  of  the  mouth  of  the 
DesChutes  river,  the  very  evidence  we  need 
turns  up.  More  than  two  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  above  the  present  level  of  the  river,  and 
therefore  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  higher 
than  the  elevation  with  which  we  started  in 
theory,  buried  in  the  stratified  sands,  clays 
and  gravels  that  mark  the  wash  of  those 
streams  into  and  along  that  old  lake  beach, 
are  found  the  tusks,  teeth  and  bones  of  the 
land  animals  of  that  period,  marking  at  once 
the  height  at  which  these  waters  stood  and 
the  life  record  of  the  times.  A  visit  to  this 
locality  in  company  with  an  eminent  geol- 
ogist, the  late  Professor  LeConte,  gives  re- 
markably fresh  vividness  to  the  recollection 
of  the  facts  and  figures  that  define  the  posi- 
tion of  its  fossils. 


66  The  Willamette  Sound. 

A  ride  of  four  or  five  miles  from  The 
Dalles,  brings  us  to  where  three  of  the  creeks 
referred  to  join  their  streams  and  empty  to- 
gether into  the  Columbia.  The  surrounding 
hills  are  composed  largely  of  soft  volcanic 
tufa,  and  through  this  these  streams  have 
worn  deep  ravines  in  their  descent.  The 
ravines  were  worn  to  their  present  depth  long 
before  the  period  we  are  describing,  and  when 
subsequently  the  waters  rose  here,  backed  up 
from  the  ocean,  they  filled  these  ravines,  con- 
verting them  into  deep  bays,  and  thus  form- 
ing so  many  sheltered  nooks  into  which  the 
streams  washed  and  in  which  they  buried 
whatever  the  winds  or  floods  committed  to 
their  keeping.  On  entering  one  of  these  ra- 
vines, we  come  suddenly  to  the  edge  of  a 
newer  and  deeper  excavation  in  its  mid-chan- 
nel. A  sudden  melting  of  snows  on  the  neigh- 
boring hills,  a  few  winters  since,  had  caused 
these  newer  excavations.  Scores  of  them 
were  opened  here  within  a  circuit  of  twenty 
miles.  The  one  we  entered  is  a  large  one, 
though  not  the  largest.  It  is  more  than  a 


The  Willamette  Sound.  67 

mile  in  length,  is  in  some  places  two  hundred 
feet  wide  and  twenty-five  to  thirty  deep. 
Along  the  freshly  fallen  sides  of  these  new 
excavations  one  can  see  the  distinct  hori- 
zontally stratified  deposits  we  are  seeking. 
The  record  at  Shoalwater  bay  is  the  latest 
there;  the  record  among  these  ravines  is  the 
latest  here.  The  height  of  water  proved  to 
have  existed  so  recently  there  must  neces- 
sarily have  made  its  mark  here.  And  now, 
inasmuch  as  these  ravine  sediments  are  the 
latest  traces  of  high  waters  here,  their  eleva- 
tion necessarily  gives  the  height  of  those 
waters.  And  the  figures  that  mark  the  height 
of  these  fossils  above  the  present  level  of  the 
river  are  the  figures  we  need  to  complete  the 
theory  with  which  we  started  from  the  capes 
of  the  Columbia. 

Nor  is  there  any  room  for  mistake  here; 
for  while  this  fossil  sediment  extends  through 
a  vertical  range  of  more  than  one  hundred  and 
fifty  feet,  the  least  total  altitude  that  will  meet 
the  conditions  of  the  problem  must  take  the 
highest  portion  of  this  fossil  bed.  Stating  this 


68  The  Willamette  Sound. 

at  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above  the  pres- 
ent level  of  the  river  is  placing  it  at  the  low- 
est, and  even  then  with  the  understanding 
that  we  are  dealing  with  sediment  and  not 
with  surface  lines.  Nor  yet  will  it  do  to  set 
these  facts  to  the  credit  of  that  system  of 
river  terraces  known  to  exist  throughout  the 
northern  portion  of  our  continent.  These 
were  described  from  Frazer  river  by  Chief 
Justice  Begbie  of  British  Columbia,  and  years 
ago  Professor  Dana  described  those  from  Ore- 
gon and  California;  still  later  The  American 
Journal  of  Science  designated  them  as  "part 
of  a  system  of  terraces  that  covers  a  large 
part  of  North  America  north  of  the  Ohio 
and  existing  on  all  streams,  as  far  as  exam- 
ined, nearly  to  their  heads  in  the  mountains." 
Now  our  facts  and  these — exclusively  in- 
land facts — refuse  to  be  classed  together. 
The  system  of  old  shore  lines  we  are  tracing 
belongs  primarily  to  the  sea  shore.  These 
other  terraces  run  inland,  high  among  the 
mountains.  The  facts  upon  which  our  theory 
was  based  were  gathered  at  Shoalwater  bay, 


K 

^ 

5! 


The  Willamette  Sound.  69 

were  controlled  entirely  by  the  level  of  the 
Pacific  ocean,  and  scarcely  affected  by  the 
flood  levels  in  the  river,  and  still  less  by  any 
extended  lake  system  of  the  interior. 

And  now,  with  our  amended  theory  in 
mind  as  a  measuring  rod,  let  us  retrace  our 
steps  to  the  lower  country — the  Willamette 
sound  of  the  olden  time.  Let  the  fall  of  the 
Columbia  river,  from  this  lake  shore  east  of 
the  Cascade  mountains  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Willamette  river,  be  stated  at  eighty  feet.  Our 
fossil  remains  on  this  lake  shore  are  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  feet  above  the  present  level  of 
its  waters,  making  a  total  of  three  hundred 
and  thirty  feet  as  the  depth  of  those  waters 
above  the  present  surface  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Willamette  river.  How  naturally  one 
looks  to  the  currents  of  such,  a  vast  body  of 
water  as  the  agency  competent  to  the  heaping 
up  of  that  long  sandy  ridge,  one  hundred 
feet  high,  through  which  the  river  has  cut  its 
way  at  Swan  island,  north  of  Portland!  But 
let  us  follow  it  still  farther  inland.  Over 
where  Portland  now  stands,  these  waters  were 


yo  The  Willamette  Sound. 

three  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet  deep;  over 
Salem  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet;  over 
Albany,  one  hundred  and  fifteen  feet;  over 
Tualatin  Plains,  one  hundred  and  forty-five 
feet;  over  Lafayette,  one  hundred  and  seventy 
feet.  A  narrow  strait  over  the  present  valley 
of  the  Tualatin  river,  ten  or  twelve  miles  in 
length,  opened  westward  upon  a  broad,  beau- 
tiful bay,  extending  over  the  present  sites  of 
Hillsboro  and  Forest  Grove,  to  Gale's  peak, 
among  the  foothills  of  the  Coast  range.  The 
subsoil  of  the  fine  farms  of  that  rich  agri- 
cultural region  is  itself  the  muddy  sediment  of 
that  bay.  Further  south  over  the  central  por- 
tion, of  the  present  valley,  and  lying  obliquely 
across  the  widest  part  of  the  Willamette 
sound,  there  arose  above  those  waters  an 
elevated  island.  It  extended  from  a  point 
south  of  Lafayette  to  one  near  Salem; 
and  must  have  formed  a  fine  central  ob- 
ject in  the  scene.  Three  or  '  four  volcanic 
islands  extended  in  an  irregular  semicircle 
where  Linn  county  now  is,  and  the  islands 
of  those  waters  are  the  buttes  of  today — 


The  Willamette  Sound.  71 

Knox's,  Peterson's  and  Ward's,  One  stand- 
ing on  the  summit  of  either  of  these  buttes, 
with  the  suggestions  of  these  pages  before 
him,  could  so  easily  and  vividly  imagine  those 
waters  recalled,  as  to  almost  persuade  himself 
he  heard  the  murmuring  of  their  ripples  at  his 
feet — so  sea  like,  the  extended  plain  around 
him — so  shore  like  that  line  of  hills  winding 
from  Mary's  peak,  on  the  west,  to  Spencer's 
butte,  on  the  south,  and  only  lost  on  the  east 
among  the  foot  hills  of  the  Cascades.  How 
natural  would  seem  to  him  this  restoration 
of  one  of  geology's  yesterdays! 

The  shores  of  that  fine  old  Willamette 
sound  teemed  with  the  life  of  the  period.  It 
is  marvelous  that  so  few  excavations  in  the 
Willamette  valley  have  failed  to  uncover  some 
of  these  relics  of  the  past.  Bones,  teeth  and 
tusks,  proving  a  wide  range  of  animal  life, 
are  often  found  in  ditches,  mill  races,  crumb- 
ling cliffs  and  other  exposures  of  the  sedi- 
ments of  these  waters,  and  often  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  surface.  Did  man,  too,  live  there 
then?  We  need  not  point  out  the  evidences 


72  The  Willamette  Sound. 

of  increasing  interest  the  world  feels  in  facts 
that  tend  to  solve  the  doubts  that  cluster 
around  this  natural  inquiry.  A  few  more  mill 
races  dug,  a  few  more  excavations  of  winter 
floods,  more  careful  search  where  mountain 
streams  washed  their  trophies  to  their  burial 
under  still  waters,  and  this  question  may  be 
set  at  rest,  as  it  regards  the  Willamette  sound. 
Oregon  does  not  answer  it  yet. 


s 

X 

s! 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  SHOSHONE  ISLAND. 

Thus  far  our  attention  has  mainly  been 
occupied  on  the  western  or  Siskiyou  island; 
we  have  now  reached  a  point  in  our  narrative 
at  which  the  other  island  calls  for  some  notice 
of  the  features  specific  to  its  region. 

The  outlines  of  this  Shoshone  island,  like 
those  of  the  Siskiyou  of  the  Cretaceous  period, 
are  in  part  suggested  by  the  back-lying  ridges 
of  the  changed  older  rocks,  and  partly  by  the 
uplying  surface  of  the  Cretaceous  shore  line. 
One  sees  a  fine  exposure  of  this  Cretaceous 
at  old  Camp  Drake  in  the  Crooked  River  val- 
ley, which  plainly  was  once  part  of  the  shore 
line  of  the  western  spur  of  the  Shoshone  is- 
land. A  like  stretch  of  the  northern  shore 
line  of  the  same  spur  may  be  seen  in  several 
localities  in  the  John  Day  valley — one  of  these 
on  Rock  creek  and  Spanish  gulch  east  of  old 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  SHOSHONE  ISLAND. 

Thus  far  our  attention  has  mainly  been 
occupied  on  the  western  or  Siskiyou  island; 
we  have  now  reached  a  point  in  our  narrative 
at  which  the  other  island  calls  for  some  notice 
of  the  features  specific  to  its  region. 

The  outlines  of  this  Shoshone  island,  like 
those  of  the  Siskiyou  of  the  Cretaceous  period, 
are  in  part  suggested  by  the  back-lying  ridges 
of  the  changed  older  rocks,  and  partly  by  .the 
uplying  surface  of  the  Cretaceous  shore  line. 
One  sees  a  fine  exposure  of  this  Cretaceous 
at  old  Camp  Drake  in  the  Crooked  River  val- 
ley, which  plainly  was  once  part  of  the  shore 
line  of  the  western  spur  of  the  Shoshone  is- 
land. A  like  stretch  of  the  northern  shore 
line  of  the  same  spur  may  be  seen  in  several 
localities  in  the  John  Day  valley — one  of  these 
on  Rock  creek  and  Spanish  gulch  east  of  old 


74  The  Shoshone  Island. 

Camp  Watson,  another  farther  west  on  the 
upper  waters  of  Bridge  creek — the  marine 
shells  from  all  these  localities  being  abund- 
ant, very  fine  and  all  Cretaceous. 

Mention  was  made  of  back-lying  ridges  of 
the  older  rocks  that  escaped  the  violent 
changes  of  the  early  history  of  both  islands. 

A  good  example  of  this  may  be  seen  on 
an  elevated  ridge  west  of  Canyon  City,  the 
Jurassic  rocks  of  which  are  plainly  seen  with 
their  characteristic  fossils  unchanged. 

But.  the  grand  work  of  building  at  this 
time  was  Cretaceous  work,  and  the  island  of 
Shoshone  went  on  enlarging  its  outline  in 
times  of  elevation  of  surface  and  lessening  its 
area  in  times  of  subsidence  throughout  the 
whole  period  of  Cretaceous  times.  The  geo- 
graphical change  that  followed  the  elevation 
of  the  Cascade  range  has  already  been  men- 
tioned in  its  relation  to  both  islands.  A  word 
on  its  relations  to  the  Shoshone  island. 

In  neither  case  was  the  dominance  of  the 
island  feature  lost.  As  soon  as  this  great  sea 
dyke  reached  the  surface  of  the  ocean  it  sep- 


The  Shoshone  Island.  75 

arated  the  waters  east  of  it  from  those  west- 
ward, the  island  waters  to  the  eastward  still 
encircling  their  island,  the  Shoshone,  as  those 
of  the  west  continued  to  encircle  the  Siskiyou 
with  marine  environment.  The  inland  waters 
slowly  changed  to  brackish,  then  to  fresh 
water.  But  these  inland  waters  were  very 
extensive.  They  received  from  the  east  the 
whole  watershed  of  the  western  slope  of  the 
recently  elevated  Rocky  Mountain  range. 

The  discharge  oceanward  of  this  great 
watershed  slowly  divided  into  three  areas  of 
drainage,  the  southern  one  laying  the  foun- 
dation of  the  drainage  of  the  Colorado  river, 
the  northern  one  laying  the  foundation  of  the 
drainage  of  the  Columbia  river,  while  the  mid- 
dle region  awaited  the  slower  process  of  drain- 
age by  evaporation. 

The  double  results  of  these  elevations  of 
surface  and  erosions  of  drainage  currents 
slowly  subdivided  the  enclosed  waters,  until 
the  interior  of  Oregon,  to  which  region  our 
story  is  restricted,  became  covered  with  ex- 
tensive lakes  connected  by  drainage  links 


7  6  The  Shoshone  Island. 

from  lake  to  lake,  till  by  progressive  drain- 
age the  links  grew  into  a  continuous  stream, 
the  Columbia  river. 

It  is  with  this  lake  period  of  the  geolog- 
ical history  of  Oregon  that  our  narrative  seeks 
next  to  deal,  and  it  is  in  its  position  sur- 
rounded by  these  conditions  that  our  Sho- 
shone island  develops  the  rest  of  its  history. 
As  these  surrounding  lakes  became  smaller 
and  shallower  the  island  extended,  and  these 
extensions  so  varied  its  stretches  of  hill  and 
plain  as  to  make  it  a  region  of  exceptional 
wealth  of  beauty  and  variety. 

That  the  climate  was  the  climate  of  the 
rhinoceros  and  the  palm  tree  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  the  bones  of  the  rhinoceros  and 
the  leaves  of  the  palm  tree  are  now  found  in 
the  rocky  sediments  of  its  lakes.  Sometimes, 
too,  one  finds  the  fruit  and  leaves  of  an  alder, 
then  those  of  a  maple  or  an  elm,  often  the 
leaf  or  branchlets  of  a  yew-like  tree  closely  re- 
sembling the  California  redwood.  In  fact 
the  leaves  of  the  forest  trees  are  large  and 
of  wide  range  of  species,  impressing  one  with 


e 


The  Shoshone  Island..  77 

the  conviction  that  they  are  the  product  of  a 
moist,  as  well  as  a  warm,  atmosphere.  One 
readily  sees  from  other  than  the  evidence  of 
its  fossil  leaves  why  this  must  have  been  the 
character  of  its  climate,  for  in  the  early  Ter- 
tiary times  the  Cascade  ridge  of  hills  had  not 
yet  reached  an  altitude  sufficient  to  exclude 
the  warm,  moist  air  of  the  Pacific  ocean  from 
the  island  of  Shoshone,  as  the  present  Cascade 
range  does  now  in  that  same  region.  So  in 
thosa  clays  the  warm,  moist  atmosphere  of 
the  Pacific  ocean  wrapped  the  island  in  its 
cloudy  folds  and  shed  upon  its  slopes  frequent 
and  refreshing  rains. 

But  more  than  this;  much  of  the  present 
region  of  Alaska  remained  under  the  ocean 
during  the  early  Tertiary  times,  and  thus  pre- 
sented an  open  passage  for  the  Japan  current 
flowing  north  of  these  Oregon  islands  on  its 
way  towards  Hudson  bay  and  the  coast  of 
Greenland;  this  cut  off  all  accumulations  of 
snow  and  ice  between  Oregon  and  the  Arctic 
ocean. 


78  The  Shoshone  Island. 

That  great  revolutionary  movement,  the 
elevation  of  the  Cascade  mountains,  while 
important  in  its  relations  to  both  islands,  did 
far  more  to  give  variety  of  surroundings  to 
the  Shoshone  than  to  the  Siskiyou  region. 
To  both  regions  the  changes  it  caused  make 
the  event  itself  the  geological  epoch  of  the 
times.  In  our  narrative  it  will  furnish  us  with 
a  convenient  division  line  between  the  records 
of  the  Cretaceous  and  those  of  the  Tertiary 
rocks,  for  its  was  the  closing  work  of  Cre- 
taceous times  to  separate,  and  the  opening 
work  of  the  Tertiary  to  begin,  the  new  record. 
But  another  feature  of  the  region  we  are  de- 
scribing owes  its  entire  existence  to  the  ele- 
vation of  this  range.  It  is  the  enormous 
masses  of  volcanic  rock  that  exist  along  the 
eastern  slopes  of  the  Cascades.  Ordinarily 
volcanoes  throw  out  well  defined  streams  of 
lava,  so  that  their  masses  are  easily  measured; 
but  this  upthrust  of  Cascade  lavas  was  most 
of  it  in  sheeted  masses,  bursting  to  the  surface 
like  sheets  of  water  through  broken  ice  to 
freeze  over  its  rents. 


The  Shoshone  Island.  79 

These  broader  sheets  of  lava  seem  to  have 
been  thrown  out  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
period  of  eruption  and  to  have  left  their  traces 
along  the  eastern  slopes  of  the  range,  while 
the  later,  narrower  and  shorter  outflows  built 
up  more  rapidly  westward  of  the  axis  of  the 
upfold.  I  recall  an  impression  I  once  received 
of  the  enormous  thickness  of  some  of  these 
lava  deposits  on  the  DesChutes  river  east  of 
the  Cascade  range. 

At  about  thirty  miles  from  The  Dalles  the 
old  Canyon  City  road  crosses  the  DesChutes. 
In  its  descent  from  the  DesChutes  hills  the 
road  was  cut  into  the  face  of  the  hill,  giving 
a  good  exposure  of  its  rocky  materials.  It 
was  thus  seen  that  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
hill,  loose  materials,  held  in  place  by  an  occa- 
sional dense  lava  flow,  characterized  the  road 
through  a  descent  of  sixteen  or  eighteen  hun- 
dred feet.  The  remaining  part  of  the  road 
was  simply  a  climbing  down  across  the  escarp- 
ments of  twenty-seven  to  thirty  well  marked 
flows  of  lava,  ranging  in  thickness  from 
twenty  to  fifty  feet  and  aggregating  not  less 


8o  The  Shoshone  Island. 

than  nine  hundred  feet.  Through  all  of  these 
the  DesChutes  had  worn  its  channel  without 
reaching-  the  bottom  of  this  underlying  hard 
basalt. 

Manifestly  the  upper  and  newer  portions 
of  the  hill  were  built  of  lighter  materials, 
mixed  more  and  more,  as  one  ascended,  with 
layers  of  volcanic  ashes,  and  where  the  layers 
were  of  denser  materials,  showing  weathering 
and  erosion  between  the  eruptions  to  which 
they  were  due,  at  once  suggesting  that  these 
eruptions  were  separated  by  considerable  in- 
tervals of  time. 

In  marked  contrast  with  this  condition  of 
these  upper  layers  seemed  that  of  the  denser 
ones  of  the  lower  division,  indicating  rapid 
successions  of  outflows  with  no  time  for 
weathering  between  them.  The  enormous 
eruptive  activity  indicated  by  these  lower  de- 
posits must  have  occurred  in  early  Tertiary 
times  and  in  sight  of  our  Shoshone  island. 

While  these  denser  layers  of  basalt  were 
poured  out  over  the  surface  in  earlier  stages  of 
this  great  eruption,  another  feature  marked 


The  Shoshone  Island.  81 

its  later  stages,  that  of  vast  showers  of  vol- 
canic ashes,  alternating  with  the  denser  flows 
of  lava.  An  example  of  this  form  of  volcanic 
agency  is  given  from  a  modern  instance  of  its 
results.  If  it  lacks  in  magnitude  it  will  make 
up  in  clearness  of  detail.  The  one  offered  is 
from  notes  of  a  journey  across  the  Cascades 
along  the  line  of  the  Middle  fork  of  the  Wil- 
lamette river. 

At  eight  or  ten  miles  from  the  summit, 
going  eastward,  the  whole  surface  soil  seems 
changed  by  a  covering  of  yellowish  dust  grow- 
ing thicker  as  one  approaches  the  summit. 
On  the  eastern  descent  the  depth  of  this  sur- 
face addition  is  greatly  increased  and  its  true 
character  is  plainly  seen  to  be  volcanic  ashes. 
While  carefully  exploring  for  evidence  of  its 
thickness  at  its  deepest,  I  became  satisfied 
that  it  could  hardly  be  less  than  twenty-five 
or  thirty  feet.  It  was  distributed  evenly  as 
a  fresh  snow  in  still  weather.  Where  it  was 
at  its  greatest  depth  the  whole  country  was 
covered  with  a  growth  of  forest  trees  and 
all  of  the  trees  were  growing  naturally  from 


82  The  Shoshone  Island. 

the  surface  of  this  ash  bank.  The  trees  of 
largest  size  were  Yellow  Pine  (Pinus  Ponde- 
rosa),  some  of  them  three  or  four  feet  in  diam- 
eter and  in  good  healthy  condition.  All  this 
forest  growth  was  on  the  surface  of  a  sheet 
of  volcanic  ashes. 

Evidently  all  this  heavy  timber  came  from 
a  replanting  that  occurred  long  after  the  vol- 
canic eruption.  For  aught  that  appears  there, 
several  successive  generations  of  trees  may 
have  come  and  gone  since  that  shower  of 
ashes  fell.  When  this  ashes  fell  it  lay  lightly 
for  a  time.  Rains  and  snows  falling  on  it  set- 
tled it  down  with  the  help  of  its  own  gravity. 
Where  it  is  now  twenty  feet  deep  it  must  have 
at  first  been  forty  or  fifty  feet  deep,  a  depth 
inconsistent  with  any  thought  of  the  survival 
of  any  forest  tree  on  which  it  fell. 

It  slowly  diminishes  as  one  recedes  from 
the  mountain  until  at  forty  or  fifty  miles  it 
disappears. 

After  a  good  deal  of  search  for  some 
exposure  of  the  old  surface  upon  which  all 
this  spent  fire  material  had  fallen,  I  was  for- 


The  Shoshone  Island.  83 

tunate  enough  to  find  one.  At  a  place  under- 
mined by  the  DesChutes  river,  I  found  a  fine 
section  of  the  bank  with  about  ten  feet  of  the 
condensed  volcanic  ash  covering  seven  feet  of 
dark  rich  soil  with  traces  of  other  times. 

This  recent  instance  of  volcanic  eruption 
of  volcanic  ashes  furnishes  an  impressive  les- 
son in  geology,  showing  as  it  does  the  extent 
to  which  such  volcanic  products  were  capable 
of  modifying  the  sediments  of  the  waters  of 
this  region  during  the  early  Tertiary  times. 

But  this  work  of  covering  the  hill  sides 
with  showers  of  soil  capable  of  sustaining  for- 
ests of  pine,  was  not  the  only  notable  result 
by  which  these  showers  of  ashes  may  be 
traced.  The  prevailing  winds  were  westerly 
and  the  drift  of  ashes  to  the  eastward,  and  this 
being  a  country  of  many  lakes  in  the  times  we 
are  describing,  much  of  this  volcanic  ash 
would  fall  on  these  lake  surfaces  and  become 
an  evenly  distributed  sediment,  covering  up 
and  so  preserving  the  remains  of  bird  and 
beast  in  stratified  volcanic  ashes.  A  very  in- 
teresting example  of  this  kind  one  finds  near 


84  The  Shoshone  Island. 

Silver  lake,  eastward  of  Klamath  marsh,  where 
finely  preserved  fossils  are  so  found. 

These  two  classes  of  products  of  volcanic 
activity  have  worked  together — the  volcanic 
flood  and  the  volcanic  cloud — each  doing  its 
part  in  fashioning  the  future  of  the  island  of 
Shoshone. 

Yet  another  feature  of  great  importance 
in  modifying  the  future  of  the  Shoshone  re- 
gion remains  to  be  described — the  enormous 
accumulations  of  lake  sediments  that  on  a 
lower  level  completely  encircle  the  old  outline 
of  the  island. 

All  the  wash  and  wear  and  drift  of  the 
land  was  of  necessity  toward  the  lowest  places 
—the  lake  beds  of  the  interior  and  the  sea 
bed  of  the  coast.  The  dust  of  the  atmosphere, 
the  sands  of  the  river  current,  the  mud  wash 
of  the  storm,  the  wear  of  the  coast  line,  all 
these  ultimately  drift  toward  the  deepest 
places;  and  because  these  deepest  places 
have  but  little  current  and  only  the  finest  of 
the  muddy  sediments  go  into  these  current- 
less  depths,  it  results  that  deep  oozy  mud  cov- 


The  Shoshone  Island.  85 

ers  the  bottom  of  such  places  and  accumulates 
there. 

That  the  mass  of  this  ooze  keeps  increas- 
ing with  time  needs  no  argument,  and  that 
the  increasing  weight  of  continued  accumu- 
lation slowly  presses  the  lower  portion  into 
various  stages  of  solidity  is  only  a  question 
of  time  and  gravitation. 

Such  a  natural  process  of  growth  of  lake 
sediments  must  have  occurred  in  the  deep 
lakes  of  Eastern  Oregon  in  those  early  Ter- 
tiary times.  Can  we  find  them  and  verify 
them  in  that  region  to-day? 

At  a  point  sixty  miles  south  of  the  Colum- 
bia river  and  about  forty  east  of  the  Des- 
Chutes,  on  the  old  road  to  Canyon  City,  the 
road  gradually  ascends  from  Antelope  valley 
to  Cold  camp,  and  from  Cold  camp  to  Kern 
Creek  hill,  from  whose  ridge,  looking  east- 
ward, a  wonderful  panorama  opens  to  one's 
view.  It  is  the  region  known  to  the  old  min- 
ers as  the  Potato  Hills.  Our  Kern  Creek  hill 
is  simply  the  elevated  shore  line  of  an  old 
lake  bed  fifteen  hundred  to  eighteen  hundred 


86  The  Shoshone  Island. 

feet  above  the  muddy  masses  that  once  formed 
its  bed.  From  this  Kern  Creek  hill  we  are 
looking  eastward  into  the  very  depths  of  that 
old  lake  bed  that  once  swept  around  the  west- 
ern spur  of  our  Shoshone  island. 

And  now,  if  after  an  hour's  enjoyment  of 
this  grand  geological  landscape  and  carefully 
noting  the  varied  shades  of  the  picture,  we 
examine  more  minutely  the  surface  features, 
we  may  easily  observe  three  or  four  drainage 
depressions  through  which  as  many  creeks 
have  carved  their  beds  and  through  which 
they  now  empty  northward  into  the  John 
Day  river.  The  nearest  of  these,  and  almost 
at  the  foot  of  the  descent  before  us,  is  the  de- 
pression of  Kern  creek.  Beyond  this,  a  like 
irregular  depression  almost  concealed  by  the 
hills  it  has  carved,  lies  the  bed  of  Cherry 
creek. 

All  this  is  simply  a  vast  system  of  carving 
done  by  these  streams  in  the  muddy  sediments 
of  one  of  these  old  lake  beds,  and  now  turned 
up  to  the  light  of  study. 


The  Shoshone  Island.  87 

The  black  stubs  of  inky  shade  are  so  many 
dykes  of  eruptive  rock  burst  through  the 
mass.  One  of  these,  a  dyke  of  columnar 
basalt,  is  exceptionally  instructive.  Seen  at 
the  distance  of  two  or  three  miles  it  seems  a 
vast  wood  pile — a  giant's  wood  pile.  Seen  at 
closer  range  it  is  found  to  be  a  stack  of  rock 
prisms  of  great  regularity,  evidently  once 
forced  up  through  this  old  lake  sediment,  from 
which  atmospheric  wearing  has  long  since 
cleared  away  the  softer  covering,  leaving  our 
wood  pile  a  picture  itself. 

These  eruptive  rocks  in  their  relation  to 
the  general  landscape  seem  like  ink  blotches 
on  the  face  of  a  painting.  If  we  look  care- 
fully at  the  other  rocks  we  shall  find  them  all 
hardened  sediments,  fresh  water  sediments, 
for  whenever  they  contain  shells  these  are 
fresh  water,  or  land  shells,  but  never  marine. 

The  aggregate  thickness  of  these  sedi- 
mentary rocks  of  Tertiary  times,  between  the 
Shoshone  island  and  the  Cascade  mountains, 
is  very  great — not  less  than  three  thousand 
feet. 


88  The  Shoshone  Island. 

If  this  seems  an  extraordinary  depth  for  a 
group  of  lakes  one  only  need  point  out  the 
almost  certainty  that  throughout  the  whole 
time  of  this  vast  sedimentation  the  Cascade 
mountains  were  subject  to  further  uplifts, 
and  the  depressions  east  and  west  of  this  line 
of  upfold  were  subject  to  correlated  subsid- 
ence, so  that  the  earlier  sediments  of  the  Wil- 
lamette valley  on  the  west,  and  the  beds  of 
these  interior  lakes  on  the  eastward  by  their 
gradual  sinking,  increase  the  capacity  of  these 
depressions  for  continued  sediments. 

This  borne  in  mind,  the  depth  of  even  three 
thousand  feet  will  not  seem  startling. 

Throughout  this  whole  mass  of  lake  sedi- 
ments, fine  and  dense  where  it  was  deposited 
in  very  deep  and  quiet  water,  fine  sandstone 
where  the  inflowing  streams  left  the  traces 
of  their  emptying,  all  occasionally  interstrati- 
fied  with  beds  of  volcanic  ashes,  are  inter- 
spersed the  leaves  of  plants,  broken  fragments 
of  wood,  pieces  of  the  bones  of  fish,  of  fowl, 
or  of  mammal. 


The  Shoshone  Island.  89 

Now  all  of  these  leaves,  fragments  of  wood 
and  pieces  of  bone  are  enough  different  from 
the  leaves  and  bones  of  to-day  to  prove  them 
belonging  to  other  times,  for  they  tell  the 
story  of  other  forms  of  life  than  ours.  It  is 
the  great  number  and  variety  of  these  fossil 
remains  of  former  life,  interspersed  through- 
out these  three  thousand  feet  of  sedimentary 
rock,  that  gives  this  old  lake  bed  its  marvel- 
ous interest. 

One  is  liable  at  any  turn  in  a  ravine  to 
find  protruding  from  its  ledges  a  fragment  of 
a  skull,  a  bone  or  a  tooth,  ranging  from  those 
of  a  squirrel  to  those  of  a  horse.  But  all  these 
underground  records  are  remains  of  life 
that  once  abode  above  ground,  and  so  really 
describe  the  former  inhabitants  of  the  Sho- 
shone island  and  its  environment  of  lakes. 

If  now  from  our  point  of  outlook  on  the 
crest  of  Kern  Creek  hill,  looking  eastward, 
we  may  imagine  the  waters  of  that  lake  re- 
turned until  they  submerged  the  whole  of  the 
John  Day  basin,  we  might  see  across  these 
returned  waters  fifty  miles  away  the  ancient 


90  The  Shoshone  Island. 

western  spur  and  slopes  of  the  island,  the  Sho- 
shone island  of  the  early  Tertiaries.  True,  it 
to-day  lacks  the  palm  tree  on  the  shore  and 
the  rhinoceros  and  hippopotamus  in  its  wa- 
ters, but  their  graves  are  here,  monuments 
that  speak  eloquently  of  other  times. 

While  these  sediments  of  mud  or  sand  or 
ash  all  come  from  the  wear  and  wash  of  the 
land  transported  into  the  lakes  by  winds  or 
streams,  there  is  another  sedimentary  deposit 
indigenous  to  the  lake  beds  themselves,  and 
so  different  from  the  others  as  to  call  for  a 
word  of  special  mention.  It  is  known  as 
Diatomaceous  earth.  It  is  found  in  the  form 
of  a  stratified  white,  or  yellowish  white,  rock, 
often  so  light  as  to  float  on  water  and  some- 
times mistaken  for  chalk.  It  is  often  sold  in 
the  shops  under  different  names  as  a  polishing 
powder  and  as  such  is  often  named  Tripolite. 
On  examination  under  a  good  microscope  it 
is  found  to  be  made  up  of  the  remains  of  one- 
celled  plants  whose  cell  coating  is  silica,  and 
it  is  the  accumulation  of  these  shells  or  coat- 
ings that  makes  the  mass  of  the  rock. 


The  Shoshone  Island.  91 

Recent  deposits  of  this  material  are  found 
in  both  sea  and  fresh  water,  sometimes  in 
swamps  and  in  peat  bogs.  Extensive  beds  of 
it  are  found  fossil  along  the  upper  DesChutes 
river  in  old  lake  bed  deposits.  A  fine  bed  of  it 
may  be  found  in  a  sloping  bank  of  Three 
Mile  creek,  two  or  three  miles  south  of  The 
Dalles, 

Geologically  older  than  these  deposits  just 
mentioned  is  a  bed  of  this  rock  found  in  the 
upper  John  Day  valley,  underlying  the  Plio- 
cene rocks  of  that  region  and  tilted  at  quite 
an  angle,  while  the  Pliocene  is  nearly  horizon- 
tal, a  fact  that  would  at  once  place  it  among 
the  early  Tertiaries. 

An  interesting  outcrop  of  this  may  be  seen 
at  the  old  Belshaw  ranch  on  the  Canyon  City 
road  in  the  John  Day  valley.  The  rock  itself 
floats  on  water,  is  white  as  chalk,  and  contains, 
besides  its  microscopic  plant  cells,  some  finely 
preserved  leaf  prints  of  oak,  maple  and  other 
forest  trees.  Like  chalk  this  rock  is  made  up 
of  the  dead  shells  of  a  one-celled  organism, 
but  the  chalk  is  the  cell  covering  of  an  ani- 


The  Shoshone  Island.  93 

ive  shore  lines  were  worked  by  the  same 
ocean,  receiving  into  their  deposits  the  re- 
mains of  the  same  sea  life,  and  were  affected 
alike  by  the  heat  and  pressure  of  their  vast 
accumulations  of  the  wear  and  the  wash  of 
older  things.  Nothing  of  all  this  tended  to 
make  these  islands  unlike,  and  so  their  growth 
was  treated  as  the  growth  of  twin  sisters.  The 
divergence  in  their  records  commenced  with 
the  growth  of  the  Cascade  barrier  between 
them,  and  of  the  early  history  of  this  and  its 
special  bearing  on  the  development  of  the 
Shoshone  island,  careful  note  has  been  at- 
tempted. 

At  a  later  period  in  its  history,  this  barrier 
character  took  another  form.  From  a  mere 
water  barrier  to  a  range  of  hills,  and  still  later 
to  a  vast  range  of  mountains,  increased  eleva- 
tion lifted  it  into  an  atmospheric  agency  quite 
as  important  as  its  previous  marine  one,  for 
when  it  reached  the  altitude  of  a  mountain 
range  it  excluded  the  moist,  warm  current 
of  the  Pacific  ocean  and  thus  surrendered  the 


94  The  Shoshone  Island. 

interior  to  the  dry,  cold  winds  of  the  conti- 
nent eastward. 

Yet  another  of  these  barrier  functions  re- 
mains to  be  ascribed  to  the  Cascade  range. 
Its  uplift  along  the  coast  of  Alaska  made  it  a 
barrier  to  the  flow  eastward  of  the  Japan  cur- 
rent of  the  ocean. 

The  present  extended  plains  from  Alaska 
to  Baffin's  bay  would  warrant  the  conclusion 
that  before  the  elevation  of  the  Cascade  bar- 
rier at  Alaska,  the  Japan  current  must  have 
flowed  over  those  stretches  of  low  country  on 
its  way  northward. 

The  effect  of  this,  as  previously  noted, 
would  be  to  sweep  away  all  accumulations  of 
snow  and  ice  in  that  region;  in  other  words, 
would  prevent  accumulations  of  snow  and  ice 
between  our  island  of  Shoshone  and  the  Arc- 
tic circle,  a  condition  of  things  which  would 
be  very  effective  in  modifying  the  climate  of 
the  region  we  are  describing. 

Yet  such  an  inflow  of  a  vast  tropical  river 
from  the  ocean  itself  must  have  'existed  till 


The  Shoshone  Island.  95 

turned  aside  by  the  upfold  of  this  Cascade 
barrier  along  the  coast  of  Alaska. 

To  say  that  this  great  upfold  of  the  earth 
kept  on  increasing  in  height  and  breadth 
through  the  early  and  middle  Tertiary  times, 
would  tend  to  obscure  the  strong  line  of  the 
history,  for  it  was  the  force  that  lifted  this 
Cascade  dyke  into  the  Cascade  range  of  hills, 
and  these  in  turn  into  the  Cascade  range  of 
mountains.  It  was  the  epochs  of  these  suc- 
cessive upfolds  that  marked  off  into  time  pe- 
riods the  Eocene  or  early  Tertiary,  the  Mio- 
cene or  middle  Tertiary,  and  the  Pliocene  or 
latest  Tertiary. 

But  there  is  still  a  wider  view  of  its  world 
relations  than  this  one  of  the  Pacific  slope; 
for  while  this  Cascade  barrier  was  making  a 
geographical  separation  between  our  two  is- 
lands of  the  Pacific,  there  was  an  extension  of 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  northward  into  what  is 
now  British  America,  covering  much  of  the 
region  now  occupied  by  the  Rocky  mountains. 
The  same  crumpling  process  that  elevated  the 
Cascade  barrier  by  a  like  process  of  elevation, 


96  The  Shoshone  Island. 

closed  this  American  Mediterranean  to  the 
ocean,  and  also  added  to  the  height  and 
breadth  of  the  already  begun  upfold  of  the 
Rocky  mountains.  This  change  was  closely 
followed  by  the  conversion  of  the  inclosed 
waters  of  the  region  from  salt,  through  brack- 
ish, to  fresh  waters. 

And  yet  a  still  wider  relationship  may  be 
mentioned.  Up  to  the  time  when  the  Cascade 
barrier  was  separating  our  Pacific  islands, 
Western  Europe,  from  the  British  islands  to 
the  Black  sea,  was  covered  by  a  deep  ocean 
over  whose  bed  had  been  slowly  deposited  the 
cast  off  calcareous  shells  of  a  Protozoan  ani- 
mal, the  Globigerina.  This  accumulation  of 
life-remains,  hundreds  of  feet  in  thickness  and 
extending  over  a  length  of  six  hundred  miles, 
was  brought  to  a  close  by  the  elevation  of  the 
sea  bed,  its  calcareous  sediment  to  be  known 
in  after  time  as  the  chalk  beds  of  Europe. 

Now  this  shrinking  and  the  resulting 
crumpling  of  the  surface  seen  in  this  light,  be- 
comes a  world  fact;  its  manifestation  in  the 
Cascade  barrier,  its  other  manifestation  along 


The  Sho shone  Island.  97 

the  line  of  the  Rocky  mountains,  and  the  still 
further  one  in  the  elevation  of  the  chalk  beds 
of  Europe,  are  but  three  links  in  the  one  chain 
of  force.  It  is  this  European  link  that  gives 
its  name  to  the  epoch,  the  Cretaceous  (mean- 
ing chalk),  and  the  close  of  this  period,  a  time 
of  great  change,  a  revolution  in  the  geologi- 
cal history,  marks  the  passing  away  of  the 
older  forms  of  life  and  the  introduction  of  the 
newer  forms  of  both  plants  and  animals.  To 
accomplish  this  result  the  great  types  of  life 
at  this  time  went  through  rapid  changes. 

The  dominant  forms  of  vertebrate  life  of 
the  Cretaceous  period  of  land  and  sea,  were 
reptilian,  the  dominant  forms  of  the  new  pe- 
riod were  mammalian. 

A  like  radical  change  occurred  at  this  time 
among  the  plants,  as  the  types  that  mark  the 
forests  of  to-day  were  not  introduced  till  after 
the  close  of  the  Cretaceous.  In  the  light  of 
these  facts  there  is  a  striking  fitness  in  the 
name  Geologists  have  given  the  period  that 
follows  the  Cretaceous.  They  call  it  the 
Eocene — the  dawn  of  the  recent. 


98  The  Shoshone  Island. 

When  the  violence  that  accompanied  the 
Cretaceous  revolution  passed  away,  quiet  was 
restored  and  life,  land  life,  took  its  new  tend- 
ency on  our  Shoshone  island. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
INTRODUCTION  TO  LIFE  OF  THE  LAKES. 

In  our  narrative  of  the  changes  that  oc- 
curred in  the  Siskiyou  region,  the  record  we 
tried  to  translate  was  made  by  the  waters  of 
the  ocean;  in  carrying  out  a  like  inquiry  for 
the  Shoshone  region,  we  have  found  ourselves 
shut  in  to  the  record  of  its  lakes. 

The  ocean  beach  has  no  break  in  its  rec- 
ord, for  the  ocean  always  has  a  beach,  and 
the  beach  always  makes  its  record,  whether 
kept  or  lost  in  later  changes.  The  muddy  sed- 
iment of  the  lake  lasts  with  the  lake  but  ceases 
to  write  when  the  lake  dries  up  or  drains  off 
and  its  record  closes.  The  lake,  then,  keeps 
the  geological  record  of  the  interior  of  the 
continent  only  while  the  lake  lasts,  the  ocean 
beach  that  of  its  external  margin,  and  is  con- 
tinuous. It  will  be  remembered  when  the 
great  sea  dyke  that  formed  the  foundation  of 


ioo        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

the  Cascade  mountains  was  first  elevated 
above  the  surface  of  the  sea,  it  at  once  cut  off 
from  the  ocean  and  made  an  inland  sea  of  the 
great  body  of  water  between  that  dyke  on 
the  west  and  the  shore  line  of  the  Wasatch, 
Bitter  Root  and  Coeur  d'Alene  mountains  on 
the  east.  In  the  northern  portion  of  this  in- 
land sea,  the  large  irregular  island  we  have 
called  Shoshone  must  have  formed  a  fine  re- 
lief feature  in  so  vast  a  water  waste.  The 
level  at  which  the  water  stood  around  it 
would,  of  course,  determine  its  extent  and 
outline,  and  these  must  have  varied  from  age 
to  age,  for  surface  disturbances  have  left  many 
records  of  their  continued  activity. 

The  slow  elevation  of  this  region  devel- 
oped, as  already  described,  a  drainage  system 
southward  that  in  time  became  the  Colorado 
river,  along  whose  watershed  can  be  found 
the  record  of  its  successive  changes.  The  mid- 
dle portion  with  its  grand  list  of  Tertiary  lakes 
we  may  dismiss  as  outside  our  theme  for  con- 
sideration; but  we  will  center  our  thought  on 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        101 

the  remaining  third,  or  northern  portion,  of 
these  waters. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  ocean  bar- 
rier was  so  far  elevated  at  the  close  of  the  Cre- 
taceous period  as  to  entirely  exclude  the  sea 
from  the  interior.  Thereafter  the  fossil  remains 
buried  in  these  waters  would  be  fresh  water 
remains,  and  these  alone  are  found  there.  The 
contrast  between  these  two  kinds  of  sediment 
is  striking.  One  of  its  many  instances  can  be 
observed  on  Bridge  creek,  in  Morrow  county, 
near  the  town  of  Mitchell.  Here  one  can  see 
an  extensive  table  land  covered  with  a  thin 
soil  scarcely  concealing  the  rock  below  it,  and 
this  rock  abounding  in  sea  shells — Trigonia, 
Actionella  and  Ammonites — all  plainly  Cre- 
taceous, while  from  the  plateau  on  which  they 
occur  one  may  look  to  the  westward  a  mile 
or  two  over  a  lower  level  filled  with  later  sedi- 
ments. These  one  soon  learns  to  distinguish 
as  Miocene  fresh  water  deposits  of  the  Bridge 
creek  Oreodon  beds.  Here  are  brought  into 
sharp  contrast  the  old  basement  floor  of  the 
Cretaceous  seas  and  the  later  deposits  of  the 


102        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

Tertiary  lakes,  both  forming  to-day  the  west- 
ern slope  of  what  was  once  our  Shoshone  is- 
land. We  find,  then,  in  Eastern  Oregon  of 
to-day  the  remains  of  several  old  lake  beds 
preserving  a  more  or  less  complete  record  of 
the  life  of  the  Shoshone  region  in  early  Ter- 
tiary times.  It  is  to  be  understood  here  that 
in  all  that  is  said  of  lake  records  there  is  im- 
plied a  sediment  of  mud  containing  casts  and 
impressions  of  the  living  things  of  other  ages, 
of  things  as  real  as  the  writing  on  Chaldean 
pottery  or  hieroglyphics  upon  a  piece  of 
Egyptian  papyrus.  The  sediments  of  these 
lakes  are  in  effect  so  many  openings  into  the 
past,  openings  from  which  the  curtains  of 
time  are  drawn  aside  so  we  see  through  them 
the  vista  of  the  ages. 

Two  of  these  lake  beds  are  of  special  im- 
portance to  us  because  they  represent  dis- 
tinctly separate  life  records,  the  lower  and 
older  one  containing  a  marvelous  wealth  of  • 
fossil  life  running  through  a  long  stretch  of 
geological  history.  The  upper  or  later  sedi- 
ments are  of  more  restricted  surface  but  of 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        103 

wider  scope  of  life  forms.  The  lower  lake 
remains  would  represent  the  early  and  middle 
Tertiary,  the  upper  the  later  Tertiary  period. 
The  oldest  of  these  lakes  may  be  traced  along 
the  lower  reaches  of  the  John  Day  river  ex- 
cavated by  the  wash  and  wear  of  that  stream. 
A  southern  extension  of  this  lake  sediment 
was  laid  bare  by  the  drainage  of  the  Crooked 
river,  an  eastern  branch  of  the  DesChutes. 
Both  of  these  will  be  described  as  lower  lake 
deposits,  for  they  belong-  to  the  same  geolog- 
ical horizon. 

The  lowest  of  these  deposits  abound  in 
well  preserved  leaf  impressions,  many  of  them 
equal  to  the  finest  engravings,  the  original 
carbon  of  the  leaf  furnishing  the  printer's  ink. 
As  fitly  illustrating  these  fossils  there  is  intro- 
duced on  Plate  V  the  print  of  an  aralia,  a 
cousin  of  our  thorny  panax;  and  another  on 
Plate  VI  of  some  leaves  of  a  cycad,  a  near 
relative  of  salisburia,  the  Japanese  ginco. 

A  fine  impression  of  a  fan  palm  was  also 
found  in  these  same  rocks  a  few  years  since. 
The  palm  and  ginco  required  a  subtropical 


104        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

climate,  and  such  without  doubt  was  the  cli- 
mate of  this  region  during  the  Eocene  period. 

These  fossil  remains  of  forest  trees  of  the 
early  Tertiary  are  so  abundant  and  so  finely 
preserved  that  one  is  disappointed  at  the  en- 
tire absence  of  the  bones  of  land  animals  from 
these  early  records,  their  fossils  being  so  abun- 
dant here  in  the  next  age,  the  Miocene. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  at  the 
close  of  the  Cretaceous  period  the  mammalian 
forms  of  life  were  but  few  and  not  widely  dis- 
tributed. A  few  small  Marsupials  and  some  of 
still  lower  type,  like  the  Duck  Bill,  were  all 
the  world  had  of  mammalian  forms  at  that 
time. 

Throughout  the  Cretaceous  period  the  life 
of  the  world's  vertebrate  animals  was  nearly 
all  reptilian — the  air,  the  land,  the  waters 
teemed  with  reptilian  forms  of  life.  Mammals 
of  the  two  orders  named  had  recently  multi- 
plied in  North  America  as  well  as  in  Europe 
and  Asia,  but  it  was  not  until  after  the  great 
mountain  revolution  of  the  Cascade  barrier, 
and  therefore  until  the  Eocene  period,  that 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        105 

the  world  received  its  stock  of  highly  varied 
land  animals,  the  Mammalia.  If,  then,  it  was 
in  the  Eocene  period  that  the  orders  of  mam- 
malian life  were  so  varied  and  spread  over  the 
continent  of  North  America,  a  glance  at  the 
geography  of  the  period  will  help  to  determine 
the  relation  of  this  fact  to  our  Shoshone 
island. 

All  through  the  Cretaceous  period  there 
existed  where  the  Rocky  mountains  now 
stand,  a  deep  Mediterranean  sea.  When,  at 
the  close  of  this  period,  the  Rocky  mountains 
were  elevated,  their  mass  was  raised  from  the 
bed  of  this  sea.  As  part  of  the  result  of  this 
uplift  the  ocean  waters  were  thenceforth  shut 
out  from  the  interior  of  the  continent  and  the 
hollows  that  remained  were  filled  with  fresh 
water  and  became  lakes.  Now  into  these  lake 
beds  on  both  sides  of  the  newly  elevated 
mountain  range,  were  washed  the  skeletons  of 
the  animals  of  the  Eocene  period  and  so  pre- 
served as  fossils.  These  old  lake  beds  are  the 
"Bad  Lands"  of  to-day. 


106        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

Inasmuch  as  our  Shoshone  island  was  yet 
separated  from  the  continent  during  the 
Eocene  period,  the  mammalia  did  not  yet 
reach  that  region.  But  as  the  whole  coast 
continued  to  rise  above  the  sea  level  -  there 
came  a  time  when  one  of  the  eastern  spurs 
of  the  island  reached  the  main  land  and  joined 
the  continent.  This  came  to  pass  at  the  close 
of  the  Eocene  period,  and  at  once  the  way 
was  opened  from  the  Rocky  mountain  region 
to  Shoshone. 

The  larger  mammals  soon  discovered  this 
and  its  first  pioneers  swarmed  into  the  new 
region  of  our  future  Oregon.  The  remains  of 
these  migrating  bands  of  mammalia  are  now 
found  in  Eastern  Oregon  buried  in  old  lake 
beds,  the  soft  oozy  mud  of  which  received 
them  from  the  wash  of  the  mountain  streams 
and  effectually  preserved  them  from  decay. 

The  fact  that  these  fossils  are  found  in  lake 
sediments  furnishes  no  proof  that  the  animals 
to  which  they  belonged  were  water  animals, 
for  although  many  of  them  were  such,  a  much 
larger  number  were  land  animals.  This  result 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        107 

comes  in  this  way:  We  have  given  a  large 
lake  hundreds  of  miles  in  extent  into  which 
several  rivers  and  very  many  smaller  streams 
empty,  all  flowing  from  the  surrounding  hills. 
Now  into  these  streams  the  wash  and  wear 
of  the  whole  surface  of  the  hills  are  slowly 
drifting  to  the  lowest  places.  Once  dumped 
into  the  flooded  stream  bed  all  this  is  taken 
up  by  the  current  and  washed  down  to  the 
lake  and  out  into  its  depths,  to  be  covered 
in  its  muddy  sediments.  This  granted  as  the 
ordinary  course  of  things,  it  is  readily  seen 
that  there  is  no  sick  or  wounded  animal  of  the 
hills  passing  to  the  banks  of  the  streams  to 
drink,  but  is  liable  to  die  there,  and  the  next 
flood  will  wash  what  is  left  of  its  skeleton  into 
the  lake,  where  it  is  soon  buried  in  the  soft 
mud  of  the  sediment.  In  this  way  the  skele- 
tons, or  scattered  bones,  of  not  only  the  larger 
animals,  but  those  of  rabbits,  rats  and  squir- 
rels from  the  hills,  are  borne  to  their  resting 
place  in  the  depth  of  these  waters. 

The  ocean  has  its  own  way  of  covering  up 
and    preserving   a    bank   of   oyster    shells    or 


io8        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

clams,  but  the  place  to  look  for  land  animals 
is  in  some  old  lake  bed,  and  this  lake  bed 
being  absent  from  any  land  region,  no  matter 
how  abundant  the  life  on  its  hillside,  the  geo- 
logical record  is  lost;  for  the  hills  are  them- 
selves dying  and  Nature  writes  no  geological 
records  on  dying  hills.  The  reason  for  this  is 
not  far  to  seek.  If  a  bone  or  tooth  is  dropped 
on  a  hillside  beyond  the  reach  of  a  stream,  it 
at  once  begins  a  process  of  decay  that  in  a 
few  years  reduces  its  form  to  dust  and  it  is  • 
thenceforth  lost.  These  hills  on  which  it  fell 
are  themselves  wasting  away  with  all  that  rests 
upon  their  surfaces.  Geological  records  are 
only  preserved  in  the  sediments  of  water. 
Now,  in  the  light  of  these  facts,  we  see  at  once 
the  great  geological  advantages  conferred 
upon  our  Shoshone  region  by  an  extensive 
lake  of  not  less  than  one  hundred  thousand 
square  miles  in  area,  extending  from  Shoshone 
island  westward  to  where  the  DesChutes  river 
now  runs,  and  continuing  through  the  whole 
length  of  Miocene  time.  This  lake  of  Eastern 
Oregon  continued  to  receive  into  its  waters 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        109 

and  through  them  into  its  sediments  the  re- 
mains of  forest  and  field,  burying  them  up 
safely  in  its  profoundest  depth  and  thus 
securing  them  from  decay.  The  perfection  of 
this  mode  of  preservation  is  well  nigh  com- 
plete. The  minutest  vein  work  of  the  leaf; 
the  insect  that  fastened  to  its  surface;  the  seed 
pod  or  capsule  of  the  plant;  the  pores  of  the 
wood;  the  sutures  of  the  animal's  skull;  the 
epiphyses  of  the  bones,  enabling  one  to  tell  at 
a  glance  whether  these  belong  to  the  young  or 
the  old;  the  minutest  lines  of  age  or  accident 
on  a  tooth;  all  are  preserved  with  marvelous 
faithfulness  to  the  life  type  of  the  period,  so 
that  no  family  of  plants  or  of  animals  is  likely 
to  have  lived  on  the  borders  of  the  lake  during 
that  long  stretch  of  time,  covering  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  years,  without  sharing  in  the 
record  of  its  fossil  history.  It  is  from  such 
archives  that  materials  have  been  collected 
for  a  geological  record  of  Oregon's  past. 

In  describing  in  such  rapid  succession  the 
changed  condition  of  this  region  and  of  the 
mountain  barrier  that  walled  it  in  on  the  west, 


no       Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

there  is  danger  of  giving  the  impression  of  a 
continued  record  of  stupendous  violence.  To 
correct  this  wrong  impression,  one  needs  to 
think  of  the  great  length  of  time  over  which 
these  records  of  changes  stretch,  as  extending 
over  millions  of  years,  and  of  very  many  of 
these  changes  themselves  as  scarcely  attract- 
ing attention  while  occurring.  Its  measure  of 
results  was  the  growth  of  long  ages,  if  not 
eons.  That  there  were  times  of  great  and 
sudden  violence  there  can  be  no  doubt;  but 
these  were  of  short  duration  when  compared 
with  the  long  ages  of  quiet  growth  for  plant 
and  animal  that  intervened. 

The  reader  will  find  Plate  VII  engraved 
from  a  photograph  of  real  fragments  of  the 
bones  and  teeth  of  different  animals  all  gath- 
ered from  the  mud  of  this  lower  lake.  A 
curious  fact  in  regard  to  these  ought  to  be 
added  here,  that  the  teeth  figured  on  this  plate 
are  all  changed  to  agate  and  the  cavities  of 
these  bones  and  teeth  are  often  filled  with 
crystallized  quartz.  In  Oregon  the  term  Mio- 
cene will  always  apply  to  the  rocks  and  fossils 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        in 

of  this  older  lake  period,  the  period  of  quartz 
filled  cavities.  This  fact  of  quartz  infiltration 
is  also  observed  in  some  belts  of  Miocene  rock 
of  the  Willamette  valley  in  which  the  cavities 
of  fossil  clams  contain  perfect  casts  of  chal- 
cedony or  agate.  In  both  of  these  localities 
the  liquefaction  of  the  infiltrated  silica  seems 
due  to  the  pressure  and  heat  generated  under 
the  weight  of  later  deposits  of  sediment,  since 
removed  by  the  wash  and  wear  of  atmos- 
pheric erosion.  The  silica  infiltration  oc- 
curred after  the  inclosure  of  the  specimen  by 
the  sediment.  The  shell  drifts  into  deep  water 
and  sinks  into-  the  soft  oozy  mud  of  the  bot- 
tom. As  long  as  there  remains  any  crack  or 
chink  of  the  shell  accessible  to  this  mud,  the 
weight  of  the  water  presses  in  more.  In  those 
shells  that  are  thus  entirely  filled  the  process 
of  filling  up  the  inner  cast  is  completed.  But 
if  through  any  cause  the  shell  is  completely 
enveloped  by  the  sediment  before  the  inner 
cavity  is  filled,  then  this  upper  and  unfilled 
portion  remains  empty.  Now  it  is  this  rem- 
nant of  space  that  is  filled  with  silica.  The 


ii2        Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes. 

result  is  striking",  for  we  have  the  exact  cast 
of  the  inner  cavity  of  a  bivalve,  its  lower  half 
a  dark  opaque  sea  mud,  its  upper  half  a  fine 
translucent  chalcedony  of  rich  carnelian  tint. 
Or  if  we  take  the  same  process  as  it  may 
be  traced  in  a  different  fossil,  we  have  here 
the  jaw  of  a  rhinoceros.  We  have  the  com- 
pleted result  in  this  fossil,  and  the  entire  pro- 
cess is  this:  The  jaw  with  its  teeth  in  place  is 
washed  into  the  deep  waters  of  an  Eastern 
Oregon  lake;  it  sinks  into  the  soft  mud  of  the 
lake  bottom.  In  time  the  mud  is  pressed  into 
every  accessible  crevice  of  the  bone  and  its 
dental  contents,  but  in  the  teeth  that  are 
entire  there  remains  a  whole  set  of  cavities 
inaccessible  to  this  lake  mud.  It  is  into  these 
nerve  cavities  that  the  liquid  silica  is  forced 
and  in  which  it  is  preserved;  and  if  we  recall 
the  sea  shell  with  its  quartz  infiltration,  this 
result  often  obtains:  That  if  the  shell  is  so  en- 
tirely closed  as  to  wholly  exclude  the  muddy 
sediment,  then  the  whole  inner  cavity  is  lined 
with  silica,  clear  as  crystal,  or  if  almost  filled 
with  quartz,  as  often  happens,  then  a  small 


Introduction  to  Life  of  the  Lakes.        113 

central  cavity  only  remains  and  this  often 
filled  with  vapor  of  water.  As  these  cool,  the 
water  settles  to  the  bottom  and  an  air  bubble 
rises  to  the  upper  level,  making-  the  water 
agate  so  much  prized  on  our  coast. 

The  rocks  made  by  the  sediments  of  the 
Pliocene  lakes  of  Oregon  are  looser,  lighter, 
more  porous;  the  fossil  leaves  are  more  mod- 
ern in  style;  the  animals  more  like  those  of 
to-day,  but  there  were  no  more  quartz  filled 
cavities. 

And  now,  inasmuch  as  the  aim  of  this  geo- 
logical narrative  is  to  give,  above  and  beyond 
the  physical  changes,  the  story  of  the  life  that 
the  providence  of  God  developed  on  this  is- 
land, it  is  needful  that  we  seek  to  trace  the 
beginnings  of  these  forms  that  for  so  long  a 
period  were  indigenous  here  in  Oregon. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LIFE  OF  LOWER  LAKE  REGION. 
OREODONS. 

The  Oreodons,  a  large  and  very  interest- 
ing group  of  mammals,  now  entirely  extinct, 
were  very  abundant  in  the  days  of  this  lower 
lake.  They  had  the  molar  teeth  of  the  modern 
deer,  the  pre-molars  or  side  teeth  of  the  hog, 
and  the  incisors  of  the  carnivora.  They  ranged 
in  size  from  the  stature  of  the  coyote  to  that 
of  an  elk.  The  type  of  this  animal  is  finely 
represented  by  the  head  figured  on  Plate 
VIII.  The  characters  that  mark  all  the  fossils 
of  the  lower  lake  sediments  are  well  shown 
in  the  teeth  and  bones  of  this  head;  they  are 
dense  and  heavy,  the  teeth  finely  preserved 
and  glisten  with  the  luster  of  agates.  Aside 
from  the  relation  of  this  head  to  the  life  forms 
of  the  Miocene  period,  it  is  in  itself  an  object 
of  real  beauty.  And  yet  it  is  not  as  a  piece  of 


Life  of  Loiver  Lake  Region.  115 

sculpture  that  this  fine  stone  head  exhibits  its 
true  rank.  It  is  the  added  story  one  reads  in 
its  geological  environment,  for  it  is  primarily 
a  piece  of  the  Blue  mountains  of  Eastern  Ore- 
gon, and  as  such  its  rock  material  represents 
the  fine  sediment  of  a  deep  lake  into  which  it 
was  washed  by  a  flooded  mountain  stream. 
Not  a  tooth  of  the  forty-four  this  head  con- 
tains, but  has  a  measurable  nerve  cavity  filled 
with  some  form  of  quartz  which  could  only 
penetrate  that  cavity  in  a  liquid  state.  And 
this  liquid  condition  of  quartz  could  only  have 
occurred  under  great  heat  and  pressure,  two 
of  the  agencies  by  which  the  whole  mass  was 
changed  into  rock.  Think  these  thoughts, 
then  look  again  into  that  mute  face! 

The  head  figured  on  Plate  IX  is  in  some 
of  its  features  in  broad  contrast  with  the  one 
.just  described.  It  belonged  to  an  animal 
about  the  same  size,  but  of  broader,  almost 
triangular  crown,  yet  in  the  number  and  posi- 
tion of  its  teeth  completely  conforming  to  the 
Oreodon  type. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LIFE  OF  LOWER  LAKE  REGION. 
OREODONS. 

The  Oreodons,  a  large  and  very  interest- 
ing group  of  mammals,  now  entirely  extinct, 
were  very  abundant  in  the  days  of  this  lower 
lake.  They  had  the  molar  teeth  of  the  modern 
deer,  the  pre-molars  or  side  teeth  of  the  hog, 
and  the  incisors  of  the  carnivora.  They  ranged 
in  size  from  the  stature  of  the  coyote  to  that 
of  an  elk.  The  type  of  this  animal  is  finely 
represented  by  the  head  figured  on  Plate 
VIII.  The  characters  that  mark  all  the  fossils 
of  the  lower  lake  sediments  are  well  shown 
in  the  teeth  and  bones  of  this  head ;  they  are 
dense  and  heavy,  the  teeth  finely  preserved 
and  glisten  with  the  luster  of  agates.  Aside 
from  the  relation  of  this  head  to  the  life  forms 
of  the  Miocene  period,  it  is  in  itself  an  object 
of  real  beauty.  And  yet  it  is  not  as  a  piece  of 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  115 

sculpture  that  this  fine  stone  head  exhibits  its 
true  rank.  It  is  the  added  story  one  reads  in 
its  geological  environment,  for  it  is  primarily 
a  piece  of  the  Blue  mountains  of  Eastern  Ore- 
gon, and  as  such  its  rock  material  represents 
the  fine  sediment  of  a  deep  lake  into  which  it 
was  washed  by  a  flooded  mountain  stream. 
Not  a  tooth  of  the  forty-four  this  head  con- 
tains, but  has  a  measurable  nerve  cavity  filled 
with  some  form  of  quartz  which  could  only 
penetrate  that  cavity  in  a  liquid  state.  And 
this  liquid  condition  of  quartz  could  only  have 
occurred  under  great  heat  and  pressure,  two 
of  the  agencies  by  which  the  whole  mass  was 
changed  into  rock.  Think  these  thoughts, 
then  look  again  into  that  mute  face! 

The  head  figured  on  Plate  IX  is  in  some 
of  its  features  in  broad  contrast  with  the  one 
just  described.  It  belonged  to  an  animal 
about  the  same  size,  but  of  broader,  almost 
triangular  crown,  yet  in  the  number  and  posi- 
tion of  its  teeth  completely  conforming  to  the 
Oreodon  type. 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  117 

of  a  fox,  marking,  perhaps,  the  extreme  range 
of  the  family. 

In  looking  over  the  cases  that  contain  the 
fossils  of  these  lower  lake  beds  with  the 
thought  of  the  comparative  numbers  of  these 
large  mammals  in  mind,  the  figures  were 
found  to  be  rhinoceros  five,  horses  seven,  dogs 
four,  cats  three,  peccaries  and  hogs  five,  oreo- 
dons  twenty;  and  these  numbers  fairly  repre- 
sent their  relative  frequency  in  the  fossil  beds. 
It  will  be  seen,  then,  that  in  the  frequency 
of  their  occurrence  as  fossils  one  sees  the  im- 
portance of  their  place  in  the  life  record  of 
the  Miocene.  Paleontologists  ascribe  to  this 
skeleton  some  features  of  the  deer,  others  of 
the  camel,  and  with  great  unanimity  set  him 
down  as  a  ruminating  hog,  and  his  anatomy  as 
that  of  a  comprehensive  type  from  which  hog 
and  deer  and  camel  may  have  descended. 

One  can  scarcely  study  such  a  form,  as  he 
loosens  fragment  after  fragment  from  a  crum- 
bling hillside,  without  a  conviction  that  the 
law  of  lineal  descent,  with  the  holding  power 
of  heredity  and  the  directing  power  of  an  all 


1 1 8  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

comprehensive  plan,  entered  together  into  its 
creation.  The  Almighty's  work  of  creation, 
as  recorded  among  these  Shoshone  hills  of 
Miocene  times,  may  be  properly  defined  as  a 
providential  bringing  together  of  the  agencies 
of  mountain  streams,  of  uplifting  forces,  of 
scattering  seeds,  of  the  nurture  of  plants  and 
animals,  and  of  gathering  into  this  favored 
region  the  life  that  this  same  providence, 
stretching  over  a  preceding  age,  had  prepared 
for  this  Western  Eden  of  the  Miocene. 

RHINOCEROS. 

That  in  the  sediment  of  a  large  lake  with 
a  semi-tropical  climate,  the  fossil  remains  of 
the  rhinoceros  should  be  found  abundant  is 
not  surprising,  but  even  this  consideration 
hardly  prepares  one  for  the  frequency  of  their 
occurrence.  This  relative  abundance  would 
be  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  life .  and 
death  of  the  rhinoceros  are  both  in  lake  bed 
environment.  The  teeth  are  large  and  showy, 
generally  finely  preserved  and  attractive  as 
fossils.  • 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  119 

On  Plates  XIII  and  XIV  the  reader  will 
find  a  good  head  with  teeth  in  place  and  in 
fine  condition.  This  head  measures  seven- 
teen inches  in  length.  The  lower  molars  of 
the  rhinoceros  may  always  be  known  by  the 
shape  of  their  crowns  which  take  on  the  like- 
ness of  the  letter  L,  as  may  be  seen  on  Plate 
XV.  The  clumsiness  of  these  bones  and 
teeth  has  given  wider  play  to  the  presence  of 
infiltrated  quartz,  and  the  agate  luster  that 
follows  covers  the  whole  surface  of  the  fossil 
teeth. 

As  compared  with  the  fossils  of  the  horse, 
one  is  surprised  at  the  small  amount  of  varia- 
tion of  these  bones  and  teeth,  a  fact  that  has 
an  explanation  in  a  comparison  of  their  con- 
trasted environments,  the  horse  being  essen- 
tially an  uphill  mammal  surrounded  with  wide 
varying  of  crag  and  mountain,  the  rhinoceros 
is  shut  into  the  dull  uniformity  of  the  swamp 
and  lake  shore. 

ENTELODON. 

The  Suidae,  or  hog  family,  is  represented 
in  these  lower  lake  beds  by  several  genera 


120  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

with  different  measures  of  the  features  of  that 
family.  One  of  these,  represented  on  Plate 
XVI  by  a  jaw  and  several  molars,  under  the 
name  Entelodon,  is  perhaps  the  largest  of 
the  family.  This  old  time  companion  of  the 
rhinoceros  reminds  one  in  many  ways  of  the 
hippopotamus  to  which  it  was  closely  related. 
Its  prominent  canines,  unlike  the  angular 
tushes  of  the  hog,  were  well  rounded  and  are 
often  found  in  the  rocks  of  this  Miocene  lake. 
Many  years  ago  Dr.  Leidy  described  this  En- 
telodon from  specimens  discovered  in  the 
"Bad  Lands"  of  Nebraska.  There,  too,  they 
were  found  in  lake  sediment  in  company  with 
the  Rhinoceros  and  Oreodon. 

BOTHROLAB1S. 

Another  member  of  the  hog  type  was  rep- 
resented in  Oregon  by  the  Bothrolabis.  There 
were  two  separate  species  which  fairly  rep- 
resent the  peccary  of  to-day.  The  larger  of 
these,  given  on  Plate  XVII,  looks  quite  hog 
like;  the  other  one  is  a  symmetrical,  hand- 
some head  of  a  smaller  Bothrolabis. 


Life  of  Lo<wer  Lake  Region.  121 

Besides  these  finely  preserved  skulls  and 
teeth,  there  have  been  gathered  many  frag- 
ments of  the  same  type,  showing  peccaries 
were  abundant  in* these  lower  beds  of  the 
Shoshone. 

SMALL  RODENTS. 

Rabbits,  squirrels,  rats  and  other  small 
rodents  in  minute  fragments,  and  sometimes 
in  well  preserved  specimens,  are  found  in 
these  lower  beds. 

LEPTOMERYX. 

In  the  same  rocks  from  which  we  gath- 
ered the  teeth  of  these  rabbits,  we  found  some 
teeth  that  would  be  at  once  pronounced  as  a 
miniature  form  of  deer,  but  about  the  size 
of  the  rabbit.  There  is  such  a  small  animal, 
the  Leptomeryx,  known  as  the  Musk  deer  in 
South  Eastern  Asia,  but  the  knowledge  of 
that  fact  hardly  prepares  one  for  the  sight 
of  its  fossil  remains  in  the  sediments  of  our 
lower  lake  where  they  are  often  found. 


122  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

Dr.  Leicly  describes  the  fossils  of  this 
beautiful  Musk  deer  from  the  "Bad  Lands"  of 
Dakota. 

FELIDAE. 

On  Plate  XX  is  found  a.  fine  head  of  a 
cat  that  represents  an  animal  about  the  size 
of  an  Oregon  cougar,  only  the  skull  is  a  lit- 
tle narrower  and  the  teeth  longer  and  more 
slender.  This  head  was  found  on  the  North 
Fork  of  the  John  Day  river,  and  represents  an 
animal  that  was  common  in  the  days  of  this 
old  lake. 

Fragments  of  bones  and  separated  teeth 
of  many  sizes,  but  all  of  the  cat  type,  were 
gathered  years  ago  in  the  lower  beds  of  the 
John  Day.  A  few  of  these  are  remembered  as 
indicating  cats  as  large  as  the  largest  lions  of 
to-day.  One  such  was  lent  to  Yale  University 
years  ago,  that  has  never  found  its  way  back. 

CANIDAE. 

The  dog  type  of  this  Miocene  period  was 
represented  in  several  species,  one  of  which 
is  figured  on  Plate  XVIII  by  the  fragment 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  123 

of  an  upper  jaw  with  its  three  most  charac- 
teristic molars.  They  are  well  preserved  and 
so  distinctly  dog  as  to  leave  no  doubt  as  to 
their  identity.  These  teeth  would  indicate  an 
animal  about  the  size  of  a  Newfoundland  dog. 
This  one  was  described  a  few  years  ago  in  a 
paper  read  before  the  Academy  of  Sciences 
of  the  University  of  Oregon.  The  descrip- 
tion was  published  in  the  transactions  of  the 
academy  under  the  name  of  Canis  Shoshonen- 
sis.  The  fossil  was  found  along  the  North 
Fork  of  the  John  Day  river  by  a  man  who 
was  in  the  writer's  employ  in  1894. 

The  small  dog's  head  given  on  Plate  XIX 
was  taken  from  the  fossil  beds  of  Bridge  creek, 
several  years  ago,  by  J.  W.  Cusick,  an  Albany 
banker.  The  writer  once  found  in  these  lower 
beds  the  molar  teeth  of  a  fossil  dog,  which 
were  twice  the  size  of  those  of  our  largest 
Newfoundland. 

ANCH1THERIUM. 

The   mammalian  division   of    animal    life 
seems  to  have  been  started  in  the  world  with 


124  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

the  five  toes  growing  from  a  wrist  or  carpus 
of  the  fore  limb.  So  plainly  acceptable  is  this 
statement  that  even  the  whale  has  this  carpus 
of  the  mammal  hidden  in  his  fore  flipper  with 
its  complete  attachment  to  rudimentary  toes. 
Each  toe  is  held  to  the  wrist  attachment  in 
mammals  by  a  long  slender  metacarpal  bone, 
originally  five  to  each  hand,  and  the  diverg- 
ence of  mammalian  families  was  plainly  se- 
cured by  divergent  treatment  of  these  meta- 
carpal bones.  The  whole  five  were  made  to 
start  off  with  nearly  equal  development  for 
the  bear,  the  cat  and  the  dog.  These  meta- 
carpals  were  started  with  the  central  one  dom- 
inant and  the  rest  subordinate  for  the  horse 
family.  Two  were  evidently  started  together, 
with  nearly  equal  development,  for  the  needs 
of  the  ruminants,  the  camel,  the  ox,  the  deer, 
sheep  and  goats.  Later,  yet,  the  completion 
of  the  plan  calls  for  a  mammal  with  one  meta- 
carpal to  serve  the  purpose  of  a  single  digit, 
and  to  secure  this,  natural  causes  were  set  to 
work  to  make  dominant  the  central  meta- 


s 

a 


I 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  125 

carpal  and  slowly  cast  aside  the  subordinate 
ones. 

Scarcely  any  lesson  in  Paleontology  has  in 
it  more  of  interest  than  that  of  the  intermedi- 
ate stages  of  progress  that  connect  the  func- 
tional hoof  of  the  Tertiary  horse  with  the  rudi- 
mentary splint  of  the  living  horse  of  the  pres- 
ent time.  Here  in  the  Shoshone  land  of  our 
story — the  Eastern  Oregon  of  to-day — afe  the 
archives  of  this  horse  history  of  the  past.  In 
short,  in  these  Shoshone  rocks  of  the  Mio- 
cene age,  we  see  God's  creative  work  of  the 
ages  in  transforming  a  five-toed  animal  to  one 
of  a  single  digit.  It  is  the  revelation  of  this 
creative  process  that  makes  the  fossil  horse 
of  Oregon  so  full  of  scientific  interest. 

On  Plate  XXI  is  a  good  illustration  of 
the  metacarpals  of  the  horse  in  one  of  the 
stages  of  this  transition.  The  condition  of 
these  metacarpals  in  the  living  horse  is  seen 
on  Plate  XXI  (i),  the  lower  ends  cast  loose, 
only  the  upper  ends  articulated,  while  in  fig- 
ure (2)  these  lower  ends  are  articulated  to 
phalanges  and  these  in  turn  to  hoof  cores. 


126  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

The  enveloping  sediment  that  has  preserved 
these  bones  in  place  for  untold  ages  is  now 
changed  to  rock,  showing  the  exact  position 
of  the  distal  end  of  these  rudimentary  hoofs. 

The  form  of  horse  that  most  abounded 
here  in  the  early  Miocene  period  was  the  An- 
chitherium,  a  name  Dr.  Leidy  found  already 
in  use  in  Europe  and  so  adopted  for  these 
American  fossils.  It  was  a  genus  of  three 
or  four  species,  varying  in  size  from  that  of  a 
Newfoundland  dog  twenty-five  to  twenty- 
seven  inches  in  height,  to  that  of  a  small 
donkey.  In  spite  of  the  many  close  resem- 
blances between  the  skeleton  of  this  Anchi- 
therium  and  that  of  our  living  horse,  there 
were  two  features  in  which  they  differed 
widely.  In  the  molar  teeth  of  the  living  horse 
the  divisions  of  the  crown  pass  into  prisms 
nearly  the  whole  length  of  the  tooth,  while  the 
corresponding  molars  of  the  Anchitherium 
are  planted  in  the  jaw  by  fangs  or  roots.  The 
other  feature  in  which  they  differ  is  in  the 
divisions  of  the  foot.  In  Anchitherium  there 
were  three  continuous  sets  of  bones  in  each 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  127 

lower  leg,  joined  to  as  many  separate  hoofs; 
while  in  the  living  horse,  two  of  the  hoof  at- 
tachments are  only  rudimentary,  their  func- 
tion being  lost.  The  result  is  that  the  living 
horse  has  but  one  hoof  while  our  Anchithe- 
rium  had  three  functional  hoofs  for  each  foot. 

The  teeth  of  Anchitherium  are  wonder- 
fully preserved,  not  only  in  outline,  but  so 
completely  silicified  as  to  carry  the  luster  of 
agates.  Many  of  these  Anchitherium  fossils 
indicate  a  really  beautiful  little  animal  of 
graceful  outline  about  the  size  of  an  antelope, 
bringing  to  that  early  period  a  truthful 
prophecy  of  the  highest  type  of  our  modern 
horse.  And  so  abundant  were  they  on  the 
hills  of  Shoshone  that  fragments  of  skeletons 
are  found  in  nearly  all  its  fossil  beds. 

On  Plate  XXII  (i)  is  a  good  figure  of  the 
lower  front  teeth  of  this  animal  from  the  lower 
beds  of  the  John  Day.  It  was  of  this  hand- 
some fossil  that  an  •  experienced  stableman 
once  exclaimed:  "Full  mouth,  five  years  old 
past.  Horse?  By  George!  It  is." 


128  Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region. 

On  Plate  XXIII  is  a  good  figure  of  the 
molar  teeth  of  the  Anchitherium  from  the 
same  region. 

In  the  continued  wear  and  tear  of  the 
cliffs  of  these  fossil  beds  under  frosts  and 
storms,  the  fragments  that  survive  erosion 
longest  and  therefore  accumulate  on  the  drain- 
age surface,  will  always  be  the  teeth  and  the 
thickly  enameled  articulating1  surface  of  the 
large  bones  of  the  skeleton.  The  ends  of  the 
femur,  the  ends  of  the  tibia,  and  especially 
the  ends  of  the  radius,  are  so  distinctly  marked 
in  the  horse  skeleton  that  they  quickly  catch 
the  eye  of  the  collector. 

While  the  horses  of  the  Miocene  period 
of  the  Shoshone  region  differed  in  size,  it  is 
noticeable  that  the  different  parts  of  their 
skeletons  retain  their  relationship  in  size  and 
general  form,  so  that  any  bone  of  any  species 
found  to-day  would  at  once  be  seen  to  con- 
form to  the  type  and  show  the  size  of  the  ani- 
mal to  which  it  must  have  belonged.  The 
mistaking  of  the  bones  of  the  young  of  a 
larger  species  for  the  adult  of  a  smaller  one, 


Life  of  Lower  Lake  Region.  129 

need  never  occur,  for  the  bones  of  the  young 
carry  with  them  the  marks  of  their  tender  age. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

LIFE  OF  UPPER  LAKE  REGION. 

TRANSITION. 

Before  dismissing  the  history  of  this  lower 
or  Miocene  lake,  let  us  ponder  a  moment  on 
the  evidence  we  have  of  its  long  duration. 
We  have  a  sediment  of  mud  three  thousand 
feet  in  vertical  thickness,  by  far  the  greater 
portions  of  very  fine  materials,  indicating  a 
slow  rate  of  deposit,  other  portions  coarser, 
indicating  a  more  rapid  deposit,  but  an  aver- 
age accumulation  of  not  more  than  a  small 
fraction  of  an  inch  per  year,  and  this  built 
up  to  the  thickness  of  three  thousand  feet. 
Yes,  this  work  covered  an  immense  period  of 
time. 

Now  it  was  this  vast  accumulation  of  mud- 
dy lake  sediment  that  was  slowly  changed  to 
rock,  every  yard  of  it  teeming  with  fragments 
of  organic  forms  that  tell  the  story  of  its  times. 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  131 

But  more.  This  great  lake  bed,  one  hundred 
miles  or  more  across,  was  slowly  and  unevenly 
elevated,  till,  in  some  places,  its  bed  was 
tilted  to  an  angle  of  several  degrees  from 
its  original  level.  It  was  slowly  emptied  of 
its  covering  of  water  till  an  extended  val- 
ley only  remained  to  mark  its  outline,  but 
the  Miocene  lake  had  gone  forever.  The 
tiltings  of  the  bed  of  the  old  lake,  its 
foldings  and  crumpled  condition,  give  strik- 
ing evidence  of  the  great  forces  that  mark 
its  passing  away.  Another  fact  of  like  im- 
port calls  for  a  word  of  notice,  the  occur- 
rence at  irregular  intervals  of  dykes  of  trap 
showing  masses  of  lava  that  were  forced  up 
from  below,  filling  great  orifices  in,  the  hard- 
ened mud  of  the  lake  bed  and  speaking  of 
nothing  if  not  of  force  and  heat.  It  was  in 
this  cloud  of  confused  and  struggling  forces 
that  the  old  Miocene  record  closes. 

All  that  is  now  Eastern  Oregon  then  be- 
gan a  new  series  of  changes  on  the  surface 
of  the  upturned  ruins  of  hill  and  vale.  And 
upon  this  uptilted  mass  of  confusion,  rain  and 


132  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

snow,  heat  and  frost  began  a  new  structural 
surface  and  continued  its  reshapings  until  a 
drainage  system  was  worked  out  for  another 
geological  period.  How  long  this  period  of 
reconstruction  lasted  is  not  recorded;  its  very 
stages  of  progress  have  long  since  been 
blotted  out.  For  aught  the  record  would  in- 
dicate it  may  have  lasted  as  long  as  the  whole 
time  of  the  lower  lake  history,  and  through- 
out this  whole  reconstruction  period  the  hills 
and  plains  of  Shoshone  may  have  richly 
abounded  in  mammalian  life,  only  lacking 
nature's  mode  of  recording  the  life  of  the  hills, 
a  good  deep  lake  bed  into  which  mountain 
streams  might  in  time  wash  their  life  remains. 
The  new  lake  period  at  length  opens  as 
a  result  of  these  reconstruction  changes.  The 
old  Shoshone  lake  had  covered  a  large  part 
of  what  is  now  Eastern  Oregon;  the  new  lake 
system  consisted  of  a  number  of  more  re- 
stricted bodies  of  water.  One  of  these,  the 
earliest  published,  may  be  found  along  the 
upper  John  Day  valley,  beginning  where  Cot- 
tonwood  creek  joins  the  John  Day  river  and 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  133 

extending  several  miles  southeastward,  the 
channel  of  the  river  being  excavated  through 
it.  It  will  be  remembered  that  we  called  the 
Miocene  lake  beds  the  Lower  lake  deposits. 
These  of  the  second  group  we  will  call  the 
Upper  lake  deposits  and  apply  to  them  the 
term  Pliocene.  This  Upper  John  Day  lake 
sedimeni,  then,  is  to  be  with  us  the  type  of 
the  group. 

Another  Pliocene  lake  covered  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  depression  along  which  the  Sho« 
shone  or  Snake  river  now  flows;  a  third  of 
these  lakes  covered  the  place  now  occupied 
by  the  city  of  The  Dalles;  a  fourth  lake  ex- 
tended north  and  west  from  Walla  Walla  into 
the  Yakima  valley;  a  fifth  occupied  the  de- 
pression now  ^covered  by  Klamath  lake  and 
marsh.  Two  characteristic  fossils  run  through 
all  these  lake  sediments  of  the  Pliocene  period, 
the  camel  and  the  horse. 

HIPPARION. 

If  we  look  for  the  record  of  the  horse  type 
in  this  new  chapter,  we  shall  find  a  wonder- 


134  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

ful  increase  in  the  variety  of  its  fossil  forms. 
The  one  that  attracts  our  attention  most  from 
the  frequency  of  its  occurrence  and  beauty  of 
its  fossil  forms  is  that  of  the  Hipparion.  As 
it  occupies  a  midway  position  between  the 
Anchitherium  and  living  horse,  if  we  com- 
pare the  Anchitherium  with  the  Hipparion  we 
shall  have  the  amount  of  change  through 
which  the  horse  passed  from  the  Miocene  to 
the  Pliocene  age.  And  carrying  the  work 
further  if  we  compare  the  Hipparion  with  the 
present  horse  we  shall  have  the  amount  of 
change  through  which  the  horse  has  passed 
from  the  Pliocene  to  the  present.  Let  us 
first  compare  the  horse  of  the  Miocene  with 
that  of  the  Pliocene.  We  find  the  simpler 
teeth  of  the  Anchitherium  ha^e  in  the  Hip- 
parion taken  on  a  more  complex  form  in  the 
prisms  of  their  enamel  (see  Plate  XXV),  and 
that  the  molar  teeth  of  the  Anchitherium  were, 
through  a  large  part  of  their  trunks  divided 
into  spreading  roots,  the  body  part  of  the 
tooth  remaining  short,  while  in  Hipparion 
the  molar  teeth  have  small  short  roots  and 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  135 

i 

a  large  increase  in  the  depth  of  the  body  of 
the  tooth,  so  much  so  as  to  remind  one  at 
once  of  the  teeth  of  the  living  horse. 

That  we  may  extend  our  comparison  to 
the  feet  of  these  Tertiary  horses,  let  us  study 
the  fossil  shown  on  Plate  XXIV.  Here  is 
an  Hipparion  foot  consisting  of  three  meta- 
carpal  bones  with  corresponding  phalanges, 
the  central  one  much  the  longest  and  by  far 
the  most  symmetrical;  all  three  are  articu- 
lated both  above  and  below,  above  to  the 
carpus  or  wrist,  below  to  the  phalanges  or 
toe  bones.  It  has  been  stated  in  the  last  chap- 
ter that  the  Anchitherium  had  three  useful 
hoofs  for  each  foot,  but  this  Hipparion  fossil 
shows  the  two  outer  metacarpals  so  short- 
ened that  his  hoofs  were  plainly  carried  but 
of  reach  of  the  ground  as  he  traveled,  giving 
evidence  that  the  horse  of  the  Pliocene  was 
losing  his  second  and  fourth  toes. 

If  now  we  compare  the  same  fossil  with 
the  corresponding  bones  of  the  living  horse 
on  Plate  XXI,  we  will  find  a  very  marked 
relative  increase  of  the  central  metacarpal 


i36  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

and  a  great  relative  diminution  in  the  outer 
bones,  until  in  the  modern  horse  we  see  the 
total  retirement  of  the  second  and  fourth 
metacarpals  except  as  useless  splints.  This 
change  occurred  between  the  time  of  the  Hip- 
parion  and  that  of  the  living  horse.  Or,  these 
facts  stated  a  little  differently:  Formerly  the 
metacarpal  bones  held  the  toes  to  their  work, 
and  for  this  purpose  were  articulated  below  to 
the  phalanges  or  toes ;  now  these  toes  are  cast 
off  and  the  metacarpals  are  only  articulated 
above.  Formerly  the  middle  or  third  meta- 
carpal differed  but  little  from  the  outer  ones 
in  size,  strength  and  symmetry  of  form;  now 
it  alone  can  be  considered,  for  all  others  are 
rejected  from  their  former  functions  except 
this  third  or  center  bone.  The  rest  are  but 
the  useless  tools  of  former  working  forces. 

PROTOHIPPUS. 

Another  horse  whose  remains  are  abun- 
dant in  the  Upper  lake  bed,  is  designated  by 
Paleontologists  as  Protohippus.  As  his  name 
indicates,  he  approaches  the  modern  horse 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  137 

still  more  closely  than  Hipparion  both  in  size 
and  form.  This  Protohippus  was  also  found 
in  Eastern  Washington.  A  banking  house  in 
Ellensburg  was  quarrying  stone  from  a  neigh- 
boring hill  for  their  new  building  when  a 
workman  found  some  teeth  imbedded  in  a 
solid  rock.  These  were  sent  to  the  ;vnter 
by  W.  R.  Abrams,  who  asked  if  they  did  not 
belong  to  a  fossil  horse;  and  they  proved  to 
be  teeth  of  the  Pliocene  horse,  Protohippus. 
For  convenience  of  reference  it  will  be  best 
to  designate  the  Ellensburg  locality  as  part 
of  the  Yakima  Pliocene,  and  perhaps  a  con- 
tinuation westward  of  the  Touchet  Pliocene. 

CAMEL. 

Next  to  the  horse  in  the  variety  of  interest 
to  which  the  subject  appeals,  stands  the  Camel 
type  among  mammals,  and  in  Oregon  the 
Pliocene  must,  for  the  present,  stand  as  a 
record  of  his  life  in  the  past.  The  fossil 
camels,  like  the  living  members  of  the  family, 
were  divided  into  two  groups,  the  camel 
proper  and  the  Auchenia,  distinguished  by 


138  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

the  presence  or  absence  of  a  clawed  hoof. 
There  were  at  least  three  species  of  camel  in 
our  Shoshone  land.  The  ulna  and  radius  of 
the  largest  of  these  may  be  found  on  Plate 
XXVI,  where  it  is  compared  with  the  cor- 
responding bones  of  a  large  recent  dray  horse 
so  that  the  reader  may  judge  of  the  range  in 
size.  This  animal  must  have  been  fully  as 
large  as  the  present  Arabian  camel. 

An  Auchenia,  apparently  about  the  size  of 
a  goat,  and  perhaps  akin  to  the  South  Ameri- 
can Llama,  is  represented  by  a  portion  of  the 
head  and  teeth  of  a  very  good  fossil  from  the 
Pliocene  lake  of  the  Upper  John  Day  valley. 

The  third  species  from  the  John  Day  is, 
perhaps,  the  smallest  yet  noted,  being  only 
about  two  feet  high.  The  fossil  bones  of  a 
leg  and  foot  of  a  large  Auchenia  from  Silver 
Lake  region  is  given  on  Plate  XXVII.  This 
is  probably  the  Vitakeri  mentioned  m  con- 
nection with  the  Silver  Lake  group.  A  frag- 
ment of  a  metacarpal  bone  of  the  Camelidae 
family  was  found  a  few  years  since  by  D.  H. 
Roberts  near  The  Dalles.  Three  phalanges 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  139 

of  the  camel  family  were  found  in  digging 
wells  near  Walla  Walla,  All  of  these  locali- 
ties yielding  camel  fossils  are  presumably  ac- 
cepted as  Pliocene. 

CANIS. 

The  fine  figure  of  a  dog's  head  the  reader 
will  find  on  Plate  XVIII.  This  fossil  was 
badly  broken  when  taken  from  the  rocks,  but 
with  a  great  deal  of  labor  it  was  reconstructed. 
It  is  one  of  the  few  fossils  the  writer  has  ever 
attempted  to  name,  but  when  the  restoration 
was  complete  it  looked  so  dog-like  that  it 
seemed  unwise  to  send  it  away  from  home  to 
be  named — a  procedure  that  in  other  years 
had  cost  the  writer  many  attractive  fossils — so 
it  was  decided  to  find  for  it  a  name  at  home. 
And  inasmuch  as  this  dog  could  not  go  to 
the  large  cities  of  the  world  where  the  record 
of  new  species  was  kept,  it  seemed  fitting  to 
treat  him  like  a  country  cousin  and  call  his 
name  Canis  Rurestris. 

YAKIMA  GROUP. 

Before  entering  further  into  the  geological 
relations  of  the  fossils  on  which  the  record 


14°  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

of  the  horse  in  Oregon  is  based,  a  brief  outline 
of  the  first  discovery  of  these  fossils  will  not 
be  out  of  place.  In  the  spring  of  1866,  a  new 
mining  interest  in  Eastern  Oregon,  Wash- 
ington and  Idaho,  resulted  in  an  extensive 
demand  for  miners'  supplies  along  the  line  of 
Pend  d'Oreille  lake.  The  merchants  of  Walla 
Walla,  in  an  effort  to  secure  resulting  trade, 
opened  a  road  from  Walla  Walla  to  Palouse 
landing,  on  Snake  river.  The  distance  along 
this  road  from  the  crossing  of  the  Touchet, 
at  Palouse,  was  thirty  miles  without  water. 
To  remedy  this  need  the  road  company  dug 
for  water  fifteen  miles  beyond  the  crossing 
of  the  Touchet.  During  the  same  spring,  and 
in  the  interest  of  the  same  trade,  Mr.  Moody 
of  The  Dalles,  afterward  Governor  Moody 
of  Oregon,  was  building  a  small  steamer  on 
Pend  d'Oreille  lake,  and  on  his  way  home 
encountered  these  well  diggers  of  the  Touchet 
wagon  road.  They  had  dug  through  gravel 
to  the  depth  of  eighty-six  feet  without  strik- 
ing water,  but  Mr.  Moody  found  them  exam- 
ining some  fossil  bones  they  had  just  found 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  141 

at  this  great  depth.  They,  thinking  they  were 
human  remains,  turned  to  him  for  an  expla- 
nation of  the  mystery  and  he  promised  to 
carry  some  of  the  bones  to  The  Dalles,  where, 
he  told  them,  he  had  a  friend  who  studied 
such  things.  One  of  these  fragments  was 
found  by  the  writer  to  be  a  remarkably  well 
preserved  specimen,  shown  on  Plate  XXIII, 
of  a  fragment  of  a  radius  of  a  horse  quite  as 
large  as  the  corresponding  bone  of  a  good 
sized  dray  horse  of  to-day.  Careful  inquiry 
brought  out  the  information  that  the  region 
from  the  Touchet  to  the  Palouse  was  nearly 
level,  and  the  whole  eighty-six  feet  of  digging 
was  through  river  wash.  Here,  therefore,  was 
proof  that  when  this  horse  lived,  a  lake  thirty 
miles  across  and  eighty-six  feet  deep  stretched 
from  the  Touchet  to  the  Snake,  a  depression 
that  was  slowly  filled  up  to  its  present  level 
by  the  river  flow  of  the  region.  The  same 
winter  the  writer  published  these  facts  by  a 
lecture  in  Portland,  and  the  Portland  Ore- 
gonian  published  the  discovery  of  the  fossil 
horse  in  Oregon.  But  the  writer  took  no 


142  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

pains  to  communicate  the  facts  to  a  scientific 
journal  and  so  missed  the  scientific  credit  of 
their  publication.  This  Touchet  horse,  found 
in  1866  in  this  old  Pliocene  lake,  was,  so  far 
as  is  known  to  the  writer,  the  first  true  fossil 
horse  discovered  in  North  America. 

THE  DALLES  GROUP. 

Another  of  these  Pliocene  lake  beds  calls 
for  notice  and  description.  One  standing  on 
the  streets  of  The  Dalles  and  looking  south- 
ward, will  hardly  fail  to  notice  a  well  defined 
ledge  of  gray  sandstone  set  against  the  hills 
a  mile  or  so  from  the  town,  and  extending 
westward  three  or  four  miles.  It  is  a  rem- 
nant of  an  old  lake  bed  that  once  extended 
across  the  valley  till  its  further  margin  set 
against  the  Klickitat  mountain.  What  re- 
mains of  this  lake  bed  is  to-day  an  unbroken 
level,  although  surrounded  by  many  of  the 
grandest  exhibitions  of  volcanic  and  earth- 
quake power,  proving  that  no  great  violence 
has  troubled  the  region  since  the  waters  of  a 
quiet  lake  deposited  its  sediment  there.  All 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  143 

Miocene  deposits  are  disturbed  in  Oregon. 
This  deposit  is  not  disturbed;  it  must,  there- 
fore, have  been  deposited  after  the  disturb- 
ance at  the  close  of  the  Miocene,  which  would 
make  it  Pliocene.  But  more;  a  few  years 
ago  this  rock  was  extensively  used  for  build- 
ing purposes  in  The  Dalles.  In  one  of  the 
building  blocks  taken  from  the  quarry  was 
found  a  well  defined  fragment  of  a  metacarpal 
bone  of  a  camel,  and  the  camel  in  Oregon 
marks  the  Pliocene.  This  metacarpal  of  the 
camefl  became  of  added  interest  when  a  few 
years  since  a  fragment  of  a  very  small  radius 
was  found,  which  came  into  the  hands  of  the 
writer.  This  fossil  was  found  among  other 
bones,  two  or  three  miles  from  The  Dalles, 
by  men  searching  for  gypsum  in  an  eastern 
extension  of  the  same  gray  sandstone.  The 
animal  to  which  it  belonged  was  an  Auchenia 
of  the  camel  family  and  represents  an  animal 
perhaps  twenty-five  to  thirty  inches  in  height. 
Years  ago  the  writer  designated  the  group 
of  rocks  to  which  this  gray  sandstone  belongs 
as  The  Dalles  group  and  Pliocene. 


144  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

There  is  a  curious  piece  of  geological  his- 
tory brought  to  the  front  in  endeavoring  to 
explain  the  circumstances  under  which  this 
gray  sandstone  of  The  Dalles  group  must 
have  been  deposited  in  those  far  away  Plio- 
cene times.  It  to-day  represents  the  bot- 
tom of  a  former  lake.  It  is  two  hundred  and 
fifty  or  three  hundred  feet  above  the  present 
level  of  the  Columbia  river.  The  river  has, 
in  excavating  its  present  bed,  washed  away 
the  whole  of  that  lake  bed  excepting  this 
sandstone  remnant,  and  worn  its  way  through 
over  two  hundred  feet  of  solid  basalt  besides, 
in  reaching  its  present  level.  The  east  and 
south  borders  of  this  lake  sediment  are  con- 
cealed by  a  covering  of  glacial  deposit,  under 
which  it  may  be  traced  eastward  two  or  thrc(e 
miles.  It  was  from  this  eastward  extension 
of  the  rock  that  the  small  Auchenia  fragment 
of  radius  was  found,  and  from  this  same  gray 
sandstone  Mr.  D.  H.  Roberts  obtained  the 
distal  end  of  a  well  defined  metacarpal  bone 
of  a  larger  Auchenia,  perhaps  the  Vitakeri 
elsewhere  noted. 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  145 

From  this  same  locality  the  writer,  many 
years  ago,  made  a  collection  of  fossil  plants 
which  passed  into  the  hands  of  Dr.  Newbury. 
In  this  collection  was  a  specimen  of  birch  and 
a  beautiful  branch  of  acacia,  the  leaflets  all 
finely  outlined  upon  the  gray  sandstone  and 
the  branch  carrying  three  or  four  large  thorns 
so  distinctly  impressed  on  the  rock  as  to  give 
a  vivid  impression  of  its  place  in  plant  life. 
Besides  these,  there  was  an  intensely  interest- 
ing group  of  oak  leaves  indicating  a  range  of 
four  or  five  different  species,  the  whole  collec- 
tion leaving  on  the  mind  a  conviction  of  a 
cold,  unfriendly  climate,  producing  a  stunted 
growth  of  leaves. 

THE  SILVER  LAKE  GROUP. 

In  1876,  Governor  Whiteaker  while 
camping  in  Eastern  Oregon  in  the'  neighbor- 
hood of  Silver  lake,  noticed  some  fossil  bones 
on  the  surface  of  the  open  prairie  and  shortly 
after  this  brought  some  fragments  to  the 
writer  of  these  pages  for  examination.  The 
Governor  was  soon  convinced  that  he  had  dis- 


146  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

covered  an  important  fossil  bed,  and  the  next 
summer  by  kindly  furnishing  a  team  and  send- 
ing his  son  as  guide,  he  gave  the  writer  the 
pleasure  of  visiting  this  Silver  lake  country. 
Considering  the  narrow  area  of  this  fossil 
bed,  a  surprisingly  large  number  and  variety 
of  fossils  were  found  and  so  brought  to  the 
light  of  scientific  report.  The  last  part  of  the 
journey  took  us  through  a  monotonous  dead 
level  covered  with  sage  <  brush,  until  finally 
we  reached  the  home  of  a  ranchman  on  the 
shore  of  one  of  those  strange  alkali  lakes 
whose  flats  are  at  this  season  covered  with 
a  thick  inflorescence  of  alkali.  Here  we  left 
our  wagon  and  the  next  morning  started  on 
horseback  for  the  fossil  beds.  After  traveling 
about  eight  miles  we  saw,  from  the  eminence 
of  a  sand  dune,  an  apparently  circular  depres- 
sion four  or  five  miles  across,  in  the  lowest 
portion  of  which  was  a  small  pond,  or  lake, 
surrounded  by  grass  and  tule  rushes.  Per- 
haps two  miles  to  the  leeward  this  depression 
was  bordered  by  a  line  of  sand  dunes,  unques- 
tionably formed  from  sands  blown  from  the 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  H7 

bed  of  the  lake  that  once  occupied  the  whole, 
of  this  depression.  It  is  the  blowing  out  of 
this  sediment  which  exposes  the  fossils  buried 
in  the  depths  of  the  old  lake.  Here  we  staked 
our  horses  and  went  to  work.  We  found 
many  fragments  of  elephant  bones,  a  fine  col- 
lection of  bird  bones,  the  bones  of  a  large 
horse,  a  large  camel,  and  the  remains  of  a 
smaller  animal  of  the  camel  family,  the  Auche- 
nia  shown  on  Plate  XXVII,  which  Professor 
Cope  named  in  honor  of  Governor  Whiteaker, 
Auchenia  Vitakeri. 

Judging  from  the  uniformity  of  its  sur- 
roundings one  is  found  unavoidably  thinking 
of  an  extensive  lake  sediment,  of  which  this 
fossil  lake  is  only  a  very  small  portion.  The 
original  Pliocene  lake  probably  included  Sil- 
ver lake  and  Klamath  marsh  with  its  sur- 
roundings, and  perhaps  Summer  lake  and  an 
extension  eastward  over  the  present  Harney 
and  Malheur  lake  regions.  These  waters  were 
lowered  to  their  present  level  by  evaporation 
in  excess  of  inflow.  The  mineral  left  behind 
accumulated  in  the  process  until  it  covered 


148  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

the  face  of  the  pond  like  snow.  These  waters 
must  have  varied  in  extent  at  different  periods. 
From  one  spot  the  writer  could  mark  an  ex- 
tent of  not  less  than  sixty  miles  from  east 
tr  west  and  fifteen  to  twenty  from  north  to 
south,  with  a  variation  of  surface  scarcely 
reaching  what  an  ordinary  eye  would  call 
thirty  feet.  And  this  whole  extent  was  water- 
covered  during  the  life  of  the  elephant,  as  is 
proved  by  his  remains.  The  portions  of  this 
extensive  lake  bed,  which  remained  latest, 
caught  most  of  the  animal  bones  buried  in 
its  mud.  This  special  one  we  visited  con- 
tinued sandy  and  when  dry  its  contents  were 
laid  bare  by  drifting  winds. 

Beside  this  extensive  Pliocene  lake  already 
mentioned,  there  are,  fronting  on  Snake  river, 
a  series  of  terraces,  fragments  of  a  continuous 
lake  bed  from  which  the  writer  has  received 
fresh  water  fossils.  Among  these  a  small 
pastern  bone  of  a  horse  was  found,  establish- 
ing the  claim  of  the  beds  as  Pliocene. 

The  fossils  of  these  Silver  lake  beds  were 
found  often  lying  on  the  surface,  bare  of  any 


fi 

^ 

S! 


*  £ 


Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region.  149 

covering.  The  sands  and  dust  that  had  cov- 
ered them  were  blown  to  the  leeward  where 
they  lay  in  extended  dunes,  and  this  uncover- 
ing and  drifting  process  was  still  visibly  going 
on.  Among  these  fossils  we  found  many 
arrow  heads  of  obsidian  such  as  were  used  by 
recent  Indians. 

We  found,  too,  lying  among  them,  many 
fresh  water  shells  of  species  now  living  in  the 
waters  of  Klamath  marsh.  Shells  and  .arrow 
heads  were,  like  the  fossil  bones,  entirely  un- 
covered, lying  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground. 
If  the  sands,  the  fossils,  the  arrow  points  and 
the  fresh  water  shells,  were  all  of  the  same 
period,  and  the  camel  bones  were  Pliocene, 
then  the  arrow  points  were  fashioneb  in  the 
Pliocene  and  men  inhabited  the  surrounding 
hills  in  the  Pliocene  period.  But  the  mixture 
of  these  facts  may  be  due  entirely  to  the  sim- 
ple law  of  gravitation,  for  both  the  arrow 
points  and  the  recent  shells  may  have  settled 
down  among  the  fossils  as  the  dust  and  sand 
upon  which  they  rested  were- gradually  blown 
away.  Professor  Cope,  on  seeing  the  facts  in 


150  Life  of  Upper  Lake  Region. 

place,  accepted  the  conclusion  that  the  fossils 
and  the  arrow  heads  belonged  together  and 
were  both  Pliocene,  and  therefore  that  human 
beings  were  living  here  in  Klamath  region  in 
Pliocene  times. 


CHAPTER  X. 

LIFE  OF  SURFACE  DEPOSITS. 
SURFACE  BEDS. 

The  field  intended  by  the  term  Surface 
beds  includes  all  slight  depressions  of  the  sur- 
face producing  ponds  with  sediment  enough 
to  preserve  bones  and  teeth  washed  into  them, 
and  also  swamps  and  bogs  into  which  large 
mammals  often  sink  to  their  death,  leaving 
their  bones  to  such  preserving  agencies  as 
might  occur  there.  And  inasmuch  as  the  lat- 
est great  surface  leveling  agency  of  the  north 
temperate  zone  was  that  of  the  glacial  ice, 
most  of  these  surface  depressions  would  date 
from  glacial  times,  and  would,  therefore,  be 
properly  designated  as  Pleistocene.  Further- 
more, up  to  the  glacial  period  the  horse  and 
the  camel  were  abundant  here,  and  the  ques- 
tion of  their  continuance  in  Oregon  through 
glacial  times  is  still  in  doubt,  so  that  our 
group  of  surface  sediments  must  provide  the 
settling  testimony  on  this  question. 


152  Life  of  Surface  Deposits. 

If  the  bogs,  swamps  and  minor  surface  de- 
pressions furnish  no  horse  or  camel  bones, 
then  must  it  be  accepted  that  the  glacial  cold 
drove  these  mammals  away  or  destroyed 
them.  It  is  plain  that  the  mammoth  elephant 
got  him  a  coat  of  fur  and  lived  through  the 
cold  spell  of  the  times.  The  fossils  of  this 
group  of  Surface  beds,  such  as  the  Mastodon, 
the  Mammoth,  the  Broad-faced  Ox  and  Mylo- 
don,  though  deeply  interesting  in  themselves, 
bring  added  historical  attraction  from  the  fact 
that  a  large  part  of  their  geological  period 
overlaps  that  of  prehistoric  man. 

THE  MYLODON. 

There  were  three  of  these  sloth-like  ani- 
mals in  North  America  during  this  period 
designated  by  the  term  Surface  beds — the 
Megatherium,  the  Megalonyx  and  the  Mylo- 
don.  We  have  chosen  to  represent  the  group 
by  the  Mylodon  because  we  happen  to  have 
a  good  pair  of  claw  bones  for  illustration.  The 
animal  was  larger  than  the  rhinoceros,  fifteen 
to  eighteen  feet  long,  and  a  browser  of  trees. 


Life  of  Surface  Deposits.  153 

Its  remains  are  rare  in  Oregon.  The  toe 
bones  shown  on  Plate  XXVIII  (i  and  3)  are 
from  the  banks  of  the  Yamhill  river,  proving 
that  Mylodon  lived  in  Oregon  on  the  shores 
of  Willamette  sound  in  the  Pleistocene  age. 
They  were  more  abundant  further  south,  es- 
pecially in  South  America. 

BOS  LATIFRONS. 

The  precursor  of  the  buffalo  in  Oregon 
was  this  Broad-faced  Ox.  His  horns  were 
longer  and  stouter  and  his  bony  forehead  was 
wider  than  that  of  the  buffalo,  measuring 
nineteen  inches  across  the  line  of  the  eyes. 
His  brain  cavity  was  very  small,  scarcely  as 
large  as  that  of  a  three  months  calf  of  to-day. 
His  skull  was  not  only  very  wide  but  un- 
usually thick,  being  two  and  a  half  inches 
thick  in  mid  forehead.  The  front  of  this  skull 
is  figured  on  Plate  XXIX.  This  one  was 
found  five  or  six  miles  east  of  The  Dalles. 

THE  MASTODON. 

The  Mastodon  and  the  Mammoth  are 
both  abundant  fossils  in  Oregon.  In  some 


154  Life  of  Surface  Deposits. 

features  of  their  physiology  they  are  similar, 
as  in  size,  in  having  trunks  possessing  great 
delicacy  of  touch,  and  in  the  development  of 
tusks  of  great  power  and  of  pure  ivory,  but 
they  vary  widely  in  external  appearance  and 
their  dentition  was  strangely  different.  The 
crowns  of  the  teeth  of  the  Mastodon  are  cov- 
ered with  rows  of  conical  protuberances,  see. 
Plate  XXVIII  (2),  the  jaws  are  filled  with 
closely  set  teeth  like  those  of  other  mammals, 
while  the  Mammoth  has  but  one  tooth  at  a 
time  in  each  jaw  and  that  one  a  marvel  of 
structure.  The  mining  processes  of  the  Sho- 
shone  region  have  uncovered  many  fine  speci- 
mens of  Mastodon  jawrs  and  teeth. 

MAMMOTH. 

In  the  Mammoth  the  student  of  animal 
life  will  always  find  the  furthest  reach  of  mam- 
malian development.  The  Shoshone  region 
had  its  full  share  of  Mammoth  life,  for  scarcely 
a  digging  of  any  importance  in  Eastern  Ore- 
gon is  without  its  list  of  Mammoth  fossils. 
Whether  one  considers  the  size  of  the  indi- 


Life  of  Surface  Deposits.  155 

vidual,  the  length  of  its  life  or  the  time  allotted 
to  its  geological  horizon,  or  the  prodigious 
numbers  to  which  it  reached,  this  great  ele- 
phant stands  at  the  head  of  its  column.  In 
its  presence  our  living  elephant  is  but  a  de- 
generate offspring,  indicating  the  rapid  pass- 
ing away  of  the  race.  There  are  scarcely  any 
fossil  beds  of  this  Surface  division  but  have 
their  Mammoth  teeth  as  trophies  of  their  ex- 
cavations. The  Mammoth  tooth  is  not  sim- 
ply a  bulky  mass,  but  an  admirably  con- 
structed and  complex  piece  of  work.  The 
unit  in  its  structure  is  simple,  a  single  cusp. 
The  cusp  is  united  with  other  cusps  to  form 
a  flat  plate.  The  cusps  are  cemented  together 
by  layers  of  dentine,  each  period  of  the  ele- 
phant's life  being  accorded  a  specific  number 
of  plates  so  that  the  first  molar,  the  milk 
tooth,  is  cut  at  three  months  old  and  shed 
when  the  calf  is  two  years  old;  the  second,  of 
eight  or  nine  plates,  is  shed  at  six  years;  the 
third,  of  eleven  ,  thirteen  plates,  is  shed  at 
nine  years;  the  fourth,  of  fifteen  or  sixteen 
plates,  is  shed  at  twenty-five  years;  the  fifth, 


CHAPTER  XL 
THE  ROCKS  OF  THE  JOHN  DAY  VALLEY. 

[  Published  in  The  Overland  Monthly,  May,  1871.] 

In  the  controversies  of  the  day  on  the 
Origin  of  Species,  any  record  of  the  past 
as  authoritative  as  that  of  a  good  geological 
field,  covering  an  extensive  range  and  filled 
with  minute  details  of  events,  can  hardly  fail 
to  be  instructive.  The  basin  of  the  Columbia 
river,  with  its  tributaries,  offers  such  a  history 
to  the  world — at  once  continuous  and  author- 
itative, reaching,  in  its  field  of  operations  from 
the  Rocky  mountains  to  the  Pacific  ocean, 
and,  in  the  time  it  covers,  from  the  Cretaceous 
period  to  the  recent.  It  covers  even  the  lay- 
ing of  the  foundations  of  the  country  and  de- 
fines the  narrow  strips  of  land  that  first 
emerged  from  the  ocean  to  become  the  frame 
work  of  the  great  mountain  chains.  Later, 


158      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day   Valley. 

as  the  elevation  and  extent  of  the  land  in- 
creased, the  ocean  water  that  first  occupied 
the  depressions  between  was  displaced  and 
fresh  water  took  its  place,  brought  there  by 
the  now  greatly  increased  flow  from  the  land. 
Henceforth  history  written  by  the  ocean 
ceased;  history  written  by  lakes  and  rivers 
commenced  in  the  storing  away  of  specimens 
of  tree  and  beast  and  bird,  and  their  effectual 
preservation  as  material  facts  in  an  unerring 
record.  The  sea  thus  excluded  never  re- 
turned to  the  region  east  of  the  Cascade 
mountains.  A  vast  lake  system  took  its  place 
and  began  at  once  to  make,  as  well  as  to 
write,  its  own  history. 

There  are  many  residents  of  the  Pacific 
slope  who  will  remember  having  journeyed 
from  The  Dalles,  on  the  Columbia  river,  to 
Canyon  City,  among  the  Blue  mountains. 
For  sixty  miles  or  more  the  road  passes  over 
volcanic  materials  which  have  drifted  there 
from  the  Cascade  range.  Twenty  miles  fur- 
ther and  this  outflow  thins  out  into  a  mere 
capping  of  basalt  on  the  hill  tops.  The  hills 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      159 

themselves,  and  the  foundations  on  which 
they  stand,  are  here  found  to  be  sedimentary 
rock,  wonderfully  filled  with  the  abundant 
records  of  former  animal  and  vegetable  life. 
Oldest  of  all  in  sight  is  the  old  ocean  bed  of 
the  Cretaceous  period,  with  its  teeming  thou- 
sands of  marine  shells,  as  perfect  to-day  in 
their  rocky  bed  as  those  of  our  recent  sea 
shores,  their  cavities  often  filled  with  calca- 
reous spar  or  chalcedony  as  if  to  compensate 
for  the  loss  of  their  own  proper  marine  hues. 
Next  in  ascending  order  come  the  fresh-water 
deposits  of  the  earlier  T  ertiaries,  so  full  of  the 
leaf  prints  of  the  grand  old  forests  which  dur- 
ing that  age  of  semi-tropical  climate  covered 
those  lake  shores.  The  marine  rocks  form 
the  outer  rim  or  shore-line  of  what  was  in 
those  early  times  a  lake  of  irregular  outline, 
extending  from  Kern  Creek  hill  on  the  west 
to  Canyon  City  on  the  east,  and  from  the  hills 
north  of  the  John  Day  river  to  the  Crooked 
River  valley  on  the  south.  Within  this  lake 
depression  whose  former  muddy  sediment  is 
now  elevated  into  chalky  hills,  so  despised  for 


160      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

their  alkaline  waters  and  unproductive  soils, 
the  geologist  feels  at  home.  How  strangely 
out  of  place  a  score  of  palm  trees,  a  hundred 
yew  trees,  or  even  a  bank  of  ferns,  would  seem 
here  now,  and  yet  here  these  once  lived  and 
died  and  were  buried,  and  beautiful  beyond 
description  are  their  fossil  remains  even  now, 
as  they  are  unburied. 

Seen  from  the  summit  of  Kern  Creek  hill, 
its  western  border,  this  vast  amphitheater  of 
lesser  hills  presents  a  wild,  wonderful  group- 
ing of  varied  outlines  and  colors.  A  spur  of 
the  Blue  mountains — its  nearest  point  forty 
miles  away — covered  with  a  dense  forest, 
forms  the  dark  background  of  the  view.  The 
varying  shades  of  brown  that  characterize  the 
older  marine  rocks  rise  in  vast  border  masses, 
almost  treeless  and  shrubless,  in  an  inner,  ir- 
regular circle,  while  the  lighter  shades  that 
fill  the  deeper  depressions  of  the  central  por- 
tion mark  the  later  sedimentary  deposits;  and 
then,  like  vast  ink  blots  on  a  painting,  one 
sees,  here  and  there,  a  protruding  mass  of 
dark  colored  trap.  Through  the  heart  of  this 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      163 

these  the  bones  of  the  rhinoceros  are  frequent, 
but  the  remains  of  an  extinct  animal,  allied 
in  some  respects  to  the  camel,  in  others  to  the 
tapir  family,  are  most  abundant.  Paleontolo- 
gists have  designated  the  genus  by  the  name 
of  Orecdon.  The  remains  of  three  or  four 
species  of  this  animal  are  found  in  Central 
Oregon.  One  of  these,  new  to  science,  was 
discovered  thirty  miles  from  here,  and  was  by 
Dr.  Leidy  named  Oreodon  Superbus,  from  its 
superior  size.  The  shaly  rocks  in  which  these 
remains  are  found  are  very  brittle,  and  the  en- 
closed fossils  partake  of  that  brittleness  to 
such  an  extent  that  if  not  handled  with  the 
utmost  care  they  crumble  into  small  frag- 
ments. Two  nearly  entire  heads  were  dis- 
covered in  a  ravine  that  opens  into  Bridge 
Creek  valley.  They  had  been  exposed  all 
winter  to  rain  and  frost,  and  were  very  brittle, 
almost  ready  to  drop  to  pieces.  They  were 
passed  by  until  the  following  day,  when  a 
careful  treatment  to  several  coats  of  good 
flour  paste  was  rendered  the  more  efficient  by 
additional  pasting  on  of  common  paper.  This 


1 64     The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

was  kept  on  for  a  while,  when  it  was  carefully 
washed  off,  and  a  more  permanent  preparation 
applied.  These  specimens  now  make  a  very 
passable  appearance.  Mute  historians  are 
they  of  the  far  distant  past,  uniting  with  hun- 
dreds of  others  to  tell  strange  stories  of  the 
wonderful  wealth  of  forest,  field  and  lake  shore 
of  that  period.  A  tapir-like  animal  to  which 
the  name  of  Lophiodon  has  been  given  lived 
here  too.  His  remains  indicate  an  animal  of 
the  size  of  the  living  tapir.  Not  far  from  the 
last  were  found  some  bones  of  a  fossil  peccary 
of  large  size.  Another  of  the  denizens  of  these 
ancient  lake  shores  bore  some  resemblance  to 
the  horse.  The  remains  of  this  animal,  the 
Anchitherium,  were  first  discovered  in  the 
Tertiary  rocks  of  France  a  few  years  ago; 
more  recently  they  were  found  in  the  "Bad 
Lands"  of  Nebraska,  and  later  in  the  John 
Day  valley.  But  the  richest  chapters  in  the 
history  of  the  horse  in  Oregon  are  not  from 
those  rocks  of  the  lower  valley,  for  another 
and  a  later  record  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
valley  contains  these. 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      161 

wild  region  winds  the  John  Day  river,  run- 
ning westward  until  it  passes  the  middle 
ground  of  the  picture,  and  then  turning  north- 
ward to  join  the  Columbia. 

This  stream,  so  insignificant  in  appear- 
ance, has  done  wonderful  work  among  these 
hills.  The  river  itself  was  in  the  olden  times 
merely  a  series  of  connecting  links  between 
a  chain  of  lakes  that  extended  from  the  Blue 
mountains  to  the  Cascades  of  the  Columbia. 
It  has  for  unnumbered  ages  gone  on  excavat- 
ing vast  gorges  and  canyons  as  all  other 
streams  in  central  Oregon  have  done,  till  lake 
after  lake  was  drained  off  and  their  beds  laid 
bare  important  records  of  the  past,  cutting 
changed  to  a  treeless  desert.  The  deep  ex- 
cavations that  resulted  could  hardly  fail  to  lay 
bare  important  records  of  the  past,  cutting 
as  they  do  through  the  whole  extent  of  the 
Tertiary  period.  In  a  deep  canyon,  through 
which  runs  a  branch  of  Kern  creek,  may  be 
found  the  remains  of  the  fan  palm,  with  abun- 
dant remains  of  a  beautiful  fern,  a  gem  of  its 
kind,  which  no  thoughtful  mind  can  see  with- 


1 62      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day   Valley. 

out  wonder  and  admiration.  In  another  ra- 
vine are  seen  in  great  numbers  the  remains 
of  a  yew,  or  yew-like  tree,  that  sheds  annually 
not  its  leaflets,  but  its  branchlets;-for  in  this 
form  they  are  found  of  almost  uniform  length 
and  structure  imbedded  in  the  rocks.  This 
tree  was  evidently  abundant  upon  those  an- 
cient shores,  for  it  can  be  found  at  almost 
every  spot  where  a  little  stream  washed  its 
miniature  delta  into  the  lake.  Oaks,  too,  and 
occasionally  a  fine  impression  of  an  acorn,  or 
acorn-cup,  are  found  at  intervals  from  this 
place  to  the  Blue  mountains. 

But  the  great  geological  importance  of 
that  old  lake  depression  does  not  arise  from 
the  fossil  remains  of  its  forests,  beautiful, 
varied,  and  abundant  as  they  are,  but  from 
its  finely  preserved  fossil  bones.  Two  species 
of  rhinoceros  lived  their  quiet,  indolent  lives 
among  the  reeds  that  lined  the  old  lake  shore. 
A  little  beyond  the  southern  spur  of  that  dis- 
tant mountain  there  evidently  emptied  a 
stream  of  some  size,  for  its  delta  is  strewn 
with  fragments  of  silicified  bones.  Among 


K 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      167 

brought  to  a  close.  The  last  rock  of  the 
series  fills  the  place  of  a  cover  to  the  volume. 
Never  was  cover  better  defined  nor  more  dis- 
tinctly separated  from  the  well  written  and 
well  illustrated  pages  it  serves  to  protect.  The 
cover  itself,  too,  has  a  history  worth  reading. 
It  extends  for  miles,  varying  but  slightly  in 
thickness,  which  amounts  to  twenty  or 
twenty-five  feet,  and  is  throughout  so  entirely 
volcanic  as  to  leave  no  room  for  mistake.  Its 
materials -are  volcanic  ashes  and  cinders,  the 
cinders  ranging  from  an  inch  across  down- 
ward to  the  minuteness  of  the  ashes.  One 
can  hardly  look  at  a  piece  of  this  rock  without 
recalling  the  younger  Pliny's  vivid  description 
of  the  shower  of  cinders  from  Mount  Vesu- 
vius, from  which  he  saw  people  escaping  with 
pillows  tied  on  their  heads  for  protection. 
Such  showers  fell  here  certainly  over  hun- 
dreds of  square  miles  and  in  such  vast  bulk 
that,  pressed  by  the  hydraulic  force  of  later 
masses  above  it  into  a  solid  plate  of  rock,  it 
now  in  this  form  measures  from  twenty  to 
twenty-five  feet  through.  No  wonder  it  closed 


1 68      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

one  of  the  finest  life  records  of  that  remote 
period,  and  with  the  record  that  volume,  be- 
coming at  once  the  proximate  cause  of  the 
changes  that  followed,  and  the  upper  cover  of 
the  volume  it  sealed. 

But  this  violent  destruction  of  the  life  of 
the  period  did  not  destroy  that  lake  depres- 
sion; it  only  partially  filled  its  shallower  por- 
tions, and  added  thirty  feet  or  more  of  sedi- 
ment to  the  rest.  The  lake  remained  and  still 
continued  to  receive  into  its  archives  of  hid- 
den sediment  tokens  of  the  forces  at  work 
among  the  hills  around  it.  One  remarkable 
change  marked  that  transition;  the  labora- 
tories of  the  hills  seem  thereafter  to  have  lost 
the  power  to  send  forth  from  their  secret  re- 
cesses heated  vapors  laden  with  mineral  ma- 
terials, as  they  had  done,  capable  of  changing 
everything  they  touched  to  stone.  The  old 
sediments  of  that  lake,  if  originally  clay,  are 
found  changed  to  argillaceous  rock;  if  sand, 
changed  to  sand  stone;  if  washed  gravel,  they 
are  found  cemented  into  conglomerate.  The 
new  sediments,  if  clay,  remained  clay;  if  sand, 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      165 

Doubtless  both  portions  of  the  valley  were 
once  continuous  and  formed  one  lake,  but  a 
stream  of  lava  from  the  Blue  mountains  seems 
to  have  run  into  it  near  the  present  site  of 
Camp  Watson,  dividing  it  into  an  upper  and 
a  lower  lake.  The  lower  one  seems  to  have 
drained  off  first,  the  upper  one  remaining  a 
lake  into  the  later  Tertiary  period,  and  receiv- 
ing into  its  archives  the  remains  of  the  animal 
types  of  a  later  age.  The  river  was  apparently 
turned  northward  by  that  outpouring  of  vol- 
canic materials,  and  cutting  for  itself  a  new 
channel  in  the  deep  canyon  thirty  miles  or 
more  away  formed  a  great  bend,  and  exca- 
vated an  immense  basin  in  these  nearer  and 
lighter  colored  Tertiary  rocks.  Above  that 
bend,  that  canyon  and  that  volcanic  outflow, 
the  valley  opens  again,  and  there,  extending 
from  Cottonwood  creek  to  Canyon  City,  are 
the  remains  of  the  upper  lake  depression  of 
the  John  Day  valley.  This  later  lake  depres- 
sion received  into  its  sediment  a  larger  amount 
of  volcanic  ashes  and  cinders  than  the  lower 
one  did.  Several  of  its  strata  are  pure  vol- 


1 66      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

canic  ashes,  rough  to  the  touch  as  ground 
pumice  stone,  which  must  have  fallen  on  that 
lake  in  vast  quantities.  The  purest  was  evi- 
dently that  which  had  fallen  directly  into  the 
lake,  the  less  pure  that  which,  first  falling  on 
surrounding  hills,  had  subsequently  drifted 
from  them  by  the  action  of  the  winds  and 
waters  and  had  become  part  of  the  lake  sedi- 
ment. 

Upon  the  hills  that  overlooked  these  lake 
shores  there  lived  three  or  four  different 
species  of  the  horse  family.  Their  remains 
are  easily  distinguished,  for  the  teeth  are  well 
preserved  and  the  teeth  of  the  horse  are  well 
marked.  Almost  as  well  marked  as  these 
equine  remains  were  some  teeth  that  appar- 
ently represented  a  member  of  the  camel  fam- 
ily found  there  too,  in  a  fine  specimen  of  a 
lower  jaw  silicified  completely  and  in  solid 
rock.  Fossil  remains  of  other  species  also 
giving  a  wide  range  of  life  record,  were  found. 

But  the  most  remarkable  thing  about  this 
upper  lake  record  is  that  which  reveals  the 
way  in  which  its  history  of  this  period  wa? 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day   Valley.      171 

dawn!     Strange,  beautiful  coincidence  of  fact 
with  system! 

The  next  glimpse  we  get  is  of  the  middle 
Tertiary  period.  It  is  distinct  enough  to  en- 
able us  to  recognize  upon  those  lake  shores 
the  rhinoceros,  the  oreodon,  the  tapir,  and 
then  closes  abruptly  to  give  place  to  a  record 
of  fire  and  of  violence — the  fire  of  the  vol- 
cano, and  the  violence  of  the  earthquake — 
bringing  upon  the  life  of  the  period  a  blotted, 
illegible  night  record  in  its  history. 

But  another  dawn  came  then,  and  we  see, 
among  the  forms  that  move  along  those 
shores,  the  familiar  ones  of  the  horse  and 
the  camel.  Again  the  legible  record  closes 
and  thirty  feet  or  more  of  ashes  and  volcanic 
cinders  cover  the  land  and  choke  and  poison 
the  waters. 

A  long,  dark,  nearly  illegible  part  of  the 
record  follows,  during  which  no  life  history 
was  written,  but  during  which  the  old  throes 
of  violence  seem  to  have  passed  away,  and 
the  laboratories  of  the  earth  seem  to  have  lost 
the  power  of  forcing  heated  vapors  to  the 


172      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

surface  capable  of  changing  all  to  stone  that 
they  touched. 

The  mammoth,  the  horse  and  the  ox  ap- 
pear in  the  light  of  the  dawn  that  follows  this 
long  geological  night,  and  not  fire,  as  before, 
but  frost,  seems  to  have  closed  the  record 
marked  by  their  fossil  remains. 

This  alternating  of  light  of  life  and  dark- 
ness of  death  as  read  in  the  rocks  of  that 
region  leaves  us  long  periods  of  its  chronology 
unwritten  save  by  fire  and  flood.  What  are 
these  blanks  in  that  life-record?  Have  the 
materials  upon  which  they  were  originally 
written  been  partially  or  wholly  destroyed  or 
washed  away?  No,  for  in  a  neighboring 
mountain,  fifteen  hundred  feet  in  vertical  sec- 
tion, they  still  remain,  protected  by  a  heavy 
capping  of  basalt.  The  pages  are  there  but 
they  are  defaced  by  fire  and  ashes.  But  were 
there  not,  or  at  least  might  there  not  have 
been,  vast  periods  during  which  no  record 
was  made? 

This  supposition,  too,  is  inadmissible.  A 
lake  existed  here  through  the  whole  Tertiary 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      169 

remained  sand;  if  gravel,  remained  so,  unal- 
tered even  now. 

Long  after  that  heaviest  deluge  of  ashes 
had  settled  down  into  permanent  rock,  a  new 
chapter  was  opened  in  the  life  record  of  these 
lake  shores.  The  stratified  materials  that  re- 
ceived these  later  records  were  washed  from 
either  shore  into  remarkably  uniform  slopes 
toward  the  middle  line  of  the  lake  depression. 
These  slopes  were  evidently  once  continuous 
along  both  sides  of  the  valley,  but  since  the 
lake  was  drained  off  by  the  deeper  wearing  of 
its  outlet,  every  little  stream  from  the  sur- 
rounding hills  has  cut  its  own  ravine  through 
these  stratified  sands,  gravels  and  clays,  until 
what  was  once  continuous  is  now  cut  up  into 
the  remarkably  uniform  series  of  ridges  whose 
summit  outlines  stand  in  fine  perspective  as 
far  as  the  eye  can  reach.  In  the  ravines  that 
separate  these  ridges  the  gold  of  this  region  is 
found,  and  in  the  diggings  that  result,  the 
bones,  teeth  and  tusks  of  the  elephant  are 
often  uncovered,  a  few  of  which  have  been 
preserved.  In  the  loose  m?/eria1s  that  form 


1 70      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

these  ridges  the  closing  annals  of  that  remark- 
able lake  period  of  Central  Oregon  may  be 
read  as  in  a  book.  The  last  facts  noted  there 
are  the  records  of  the  mammoth,  the  horse, 
the  ox  and  their  contemporaries. 

We  have  thus  attempted  to  give  four  or 
five  glimpses  into  the  grand  old  panoramic 
life  record  of  the  past  in  Central  Oregon,  suc- 
cessive day-and-night  glimpses  of  the  past, 
along  the  shores  of  a  series  of  lakes  that  once 
occupied  the  valley,  now  depressed,  through 
which  meanders  the  John  Day  river. 

The  first  one  of  these  views  is  characteris- 
tic of  the  old  marine  life  of  the  original  sea. 
bed.  It  is  made  up  of  a  number  of  patches 
of  sea  beach,  strewn  with  shells,  a  tooth  or 
two  of  some  extinct  reptile,  a  vertebra  of  an- 
other, and  the  marine  record  closes.  The 
shoals  on  which  these  marine  remains  lived 
became  elevated  into  the  framework  of  the 
future  Oregon,  while  in  the  depressions  be- 
tween them  her  earliest  historic  records  at 
once  began.  Oregon's  Eocene,  Oregon's 


Si 

a 


a 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      175 

rest  only  in  the  path  of  the  theologian  who 
claims  a  separate  creation  for  each  great  type 
of  animal  life,  he  greatly  misapprehends  the 
present  state  of  these  investigations.  But  it  was 
no  part  of  the  plan  of  this  article  to  advocate 
any  existing  theory,  or  to  start  a  new  one 
in  this  difficult  field  of  inquiry  so  full  today 
of  conflicting  views,  but  rather  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  importance  of  the  Columbia  basin 
as  a  field  filled  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
with  the  very  facts  needed  to  throw  light  on 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  species. 

Three  great  ranges  of  mountains  and  sev- 
eral minor  ones  were  elevated  across  its  water 
shed,  making  so  many  immense  dams  holding 
back  the  waters  in  extensive  lake  depressions, 
among  which  the  river  itself  was  for  ages  but 
a  series  of  connecting  links.  It  is  now  almost 
certain  that  these  vast  lake  depressions  con- 
tinued from  their  first  formation  to  be  such, 
until  the  bones  of  the  modern  horse,  ox  and 
elephant  were  received  into  their  sedimentary 
deposits,  thus  including  records  covering 
nearly  the  whole  period  of  ancient  mammalian 


1 76      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

life  upon  the  earth.  Add  to  these  facts  that 
all  the  rocks  through  which  the  streams  of 
this  region  during  this  long  geological  period 
have  been  wearing  their  way  were  those  of 
the  later  and  softer  materials,  and  therefore, 
the  more  rapidly  worn  down,  not  only  in  the 
canyons  of  the  larger  streams  but  the  ravines 
of  the  smaller  ones  and  upon  every  hill  side, 
and  we  have  a  combination  of  favoring  condi- 
tions such  as  must  make  its  geology  accessi- 
ble, very  full  and  important. 

Indeed,  one  can  hardly  look  over  its  his- 
toric archives  of  the  Tertiary  period  without 
a  conviction  that  this  Columbia  basin  is  des- 
tined yet  to  be  the  great  battle  ground  of 
conflicting  theories  upon  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  species. 


The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley.      173 

period,  and  a  continued  lake  depression  sur- 
rounded by  elevated  ridges  of  hills,  rising  in 
many  places  into  mountain  magnitude,  im- 
plies the  deposit  of  continued  sediment,  and 
this  necessarily  becomes  the  page  upon  which 
the  history  of  the  life  along  its  shores  is  writ- 
ten. The  winds  would  always  blow  into  the 
waters  of  the  lake  their  burden  of  leaves,  and 
the  floods  of  winter  wash  there  some  frag- 
ments of  the  bones  of  the  animals  that  char- 
acterized the  period.  It  must  have  happened, 
then,  that  at  the  close  of  each  great  period  as 
indicated  here,  the  animal  life  of  these  ancient 
lake  shores  was  entirely  destroyed  by  fire, 
flood  and  the  poisonous  vapors  that  tainted 
earth,  air  and  waters,  or  else  those  to  whom 
migration  was  possible  escaped  to  some  other 
region.  The  supposition  of  their  entire  de- 
struction encounters  this  difficulty:  the  de- 
struction of  the  entire  fauna  of  Oregon,  and 
even  of  the  whole  western  slope  of  the  conti- 
nent, would  not  have  secured  the  results  ob- 
served, unless  we  suppose  a  like  destruction 
extending  to  the  Atlantic  coast;  for  the  same 


174      The  Rocks  of  the  John  Day  Valley. 

animals  lived  there  when  they  lived  here. 
Their  remains  are  found,  even  to  identity  of 
species,  from  Nebraska  to  New  Mexico.  It 
is  difficult  to  assign  their  destruction  there  to 
the  same  causes  that  destroyed  them  here,  or 
to  any  cause  operating  at  once  over  a  whole 
continent,  while  the  climate  remained  un- 
changed and  food  continued  abundant.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  supposition  of  the  escape 
of  a  portion  from  these  destroying  agencies 
meets,  among  others,  this  difficulty:  when 
here  in  this  John  Day  valley  quiet  had  been 
again  restored,  the  hills  had  been  again 
clothed  in  verdure  and  the  waters  had  precipi- 
tated not  only,  but  covered  out  of  sight,  their 
vast  strata  of  volcanic  ashes,  then  animal  life 
returned,  too,  but  not  the  same  that  had  pre- 
viously existed.  The  whole  fauna  was 
changed,  and  even  where  the  same  type  was 
restored,  as  in  the  case  of  the  horse,  it  is  in 
some  new  species;  the  old  had  passed  away, 
and  forever. 

If  any  one  supposes  that  all  the  difficulties 
that  beset  these  lines  of  inquiry  and  research 


CHAPTER  XII. 
AN  INDIAN  LEGEND. 

There  is  an  Indian  legend  that  many  years 
ago  the  Columbia  was  navigable  for  canoes 
from  the  Chinook  villages  at  the  mouth  of  the 
river  to  The  Dalles;  that  voyagers  on  their 
way  up  and  down  passed  under  a  great  nat- 
ural bridge  which  spanned  the  river  at  the 
present  Cascades.  The  great  falls  of  the  river 
in  those  days  were  a  little  above  The  Dalles 
at  the  present  falls  of  the  Tumwater,  where 
the  waters  then  descended  perpendicularly 
twelve  to  fifteen  times  the  height  of  a  tall 
man.  These  falls  prevented  the  salmon  from 
going  above  that  place  and  the  Indians  of  the 
interior  came  there  to  purchase  the  fish  for 
which  they  gave  buffalo  and  buffalo  robes. 
But  after  many  years  Mount  Hood  and 
Mount  St.  Helens  had  a  quarrel  during  which 
these  mountains  threw  out  fire  and  smoke 


1 78  An  Indian  Legend. 

and  hurled  great  rocks  at  each  other.  Such 
was  the  violence  of  the  contest  that  the  ground 
shook  for  miles  around  and  in  this  commotion 
the  natural  bridge  that  spanned  the  river  at 
the  Cascades  was  broken  down  and  the  ruin 
of  this  bridge  so  obstructed  the  stream  as  to 
dam  up  its  waters  at  the  Cascades,  raising  the 
river  above  so  high  as  to  almost  take  away 
the  falls  of  the  Tumwater. 

A  two-fold  result  followed  this  violent 
change.  The  salmon,  thenceforth,  were  able 
to  pass  The  Dalles,  and  the  Indians  of  the 
interior  were  no  longer  compelled  to  come 
to  the  Tumwater  for  fish,  while  the  canoes  of 
the  Chinooks  were  thenceforth  shut  off  from 
the  river  above  the  Cascades. 

The  gold  hunter  takes  a  pan  of  dirt  and 
shakes  it  violently  in  water  till  he  sees  the 
gold  it  contains,  if  there  be  any.  Let  us  treat 
this  Indian  legend  to  a  like  process.  Is  it 
supposable  that  any  existing  cause  could  have 
increased  the  obstructions  in  the  river  here 
at  the  Cascades  so  as  to  have  brought  about 
the  change  indicated  in  the  legend?  Or  are 


An  Indian  Legend.  179 

there  now  any  existing  indications  of  any  such 
changes  having  occurred? 

The  characteristic  tendency  of  basalt  to 
vertical  fracture,  especially  as  in  this  case, 
when  overlying  a  softer  rock,  renders  the  por- 
tions of  these  mountains  that  overhang  the 
river  bank,  liable  to  a  good  deal  of  crumbling. 
That  this  friability  is  deep  and  not  a  mere  sur- 
face movement  of  debris  is  proved  by  a  gen- 
eral but  slow  movement  of  both  banks  toward 
the  river.  The  able  engineer  of  the  O.  S.  N. 
Co.  once  assured  the  writer  that  this  slow 
glacial  like  movement  of  the  mountains  to- 
ward the  river  was  such  as  to  necessitate  fre- 
quent readjustment  of  the  railroad  lines  of  the 
company  on  both  sides  of  the  river.  One 
readily  sees  how  this  pressure  of,  foot  hills  to- 
ward the  bank  may  be  unequally  resisted  or 
accelerated  by  the  rate  of  erosion  over  the 
river  bed,  or  the  setting  of  the  currents  to- 
wards one  bank  rather  than  the  other.  One 
sees  too,  how  any  violent  disturbance,  such 
as  an  earthquake,  would  greatly  increase  this 
streamward  movement,  even  to  the  extent  of 


i8o  An  Indian  Legend. 

obstructing  the  channel  and  retarding  the 
current  so  as  to  cause  the  river  above  the  Cas- 
cades to  rise  above  its  former  level. 

The  five  miles  of  rapids  we  now  call  the 
Cascades  have  a  total  fall  of  thirty-seven  feet. 
If  thirty  feet  of  this  were,  by  any  cause,  now 
transferred  fifty  miles  above  to  the  other  fall 
at  the  Tumwater,  the  result  would  certainly 
be  a  barrier  to  all  further  progress  upward  of 
the  salmon  of  the  Columbia.  That  something 
has  occurred  here  to  raise  the  Columbia  above 
the  Cascades  within  a  century  or  so  is  almost 
certain,  for  submerged  groves  of  trees  occur 
along  both  sides  of  the  river  above  for  a  dis- 
tance of  twelve  or  fifteen  miles.  These  sub- 
merged forests  are  not  petrified,  as  sometimes 
stated,  but  trees  in  slow  process  of  decay  in 
positions  to  which  landslides  could  not  have 
brought  them,  and  in  a  depth  of  water  in 
which  they  could  not  grow.  They  are  now  in 
the  lowest  stages  of  water  standing  in  a  depth 
of  fifteen  to  twenty  feet.  It  is  therefore  almost 
certain  that  when  these  groves  of  trees  were 
living,  the  Columbia  river  between  the  Upper 


fi 

e 


An  Indian  Legend.  181 

Cascades   and   The   Dalles,   was    more    than 
twenty  feet  lower  than  it  is  today. 

A  strong  confirmation  of  these  facts  and 
conclusions  may  be  found  in  the  United  States 
Railroad  Survey,  Vol.  6,  where  Dr.  Newbury 
writes  as  follows:  "The  river  from  The  Dalles 
to  the  Cascades  is  very  deep,  has  an  impercep- 
tible current  and  has  rather  the  appearance 
of  an  elongated  lake  than  of  a  flowing  stream." 
Surely  this  looks  a  little  like  a  damming  up  of 
the  waters,  but  Dr.  Newbury  continues:  "At 
intervals  over  the  entire  distance  from  the 
point  where  we  entered  the  mountains  to  the 
Cascades,  the  river  is  bordered  on  either  side 
by  the  erect  but  partially  decayed  stumps  of 
trees,  which  project  in  considerable  numbers 
from  the  surface  of  the  water.  This  has  been 
termed  the  'Sunken  Forest'  and  has  been  gen- 
erally attributed  to  slides  from  the  sides  of 
the  mountains  which  have  carried  down  into 
the  bed  of  the  stream  the  standing  trees.  This 
phenomenon  however,  is  dependent  on  a  dif- 
ferent cause.  As  I  have  mentioned,  the  vicin- 
itv  of  the  falls  has  been  the  scene  of  recent 


1 82  An  Indian  Legend. 

volcanic  action.  A  consequence  of  this  action 
has  been  the  precipitation  of  a  portion  of  this 
wall  bordering  the  stream  into  its  bed." 

This  lake  like  level  of  the  waters  above  the 
Cascades,  together  with  its  great  depth;  this 
extended  sunken  forest  whose  trees  are  too 
uniformly  perpendicular  to  permit  the  suppo- 
sition of  landslides  where  they  stand;  this  gla- 
cial like  lateral  pressure  against  the  Cascade 
railroad  so  capable  of  great  acceleration  in 
times  of  volcanic  action;  these  facts  indicate 
some  truth  in  that  old  Indian  tradition  of  the 
Lower  Columbia. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  DEVELOPMENT  THEORY. 

[Lecture  delivered  in  Portland,  February,  1883.] 

INTRODUCTORY. 

"Reasoning  apriori,  we  assume  that  or- 
ganisms, both  plant  and  animal,  have  been 
created  by  development  from  pre-existent 
forms,  because  it  agrees  with  the  general 
course  of  nature.  All  the  events  in  geology, 
as  in  physics  and  astronomy,  being  due  to  the 
operation  of  natural  laws,  it  is  reasonably  sup- 
posed that  the  production  of  all  the  species  of 
plants  and  animals  from  original  simple  forms, 
like  the  monera  or  bacteria,  have  been  the 
result  of  natural  law.  The  study  of  the  early 
forms  of  life  found  in  the  Paleozoic  strata; 
the  laws  of  the  succession  of  types;  the  cor- 
relation existing  between  the  development  of 
the  individual  and  of  the  members  of  the  class 
to  which  it  belongs;  the  parallelism  between 


184  The  Development  Theory. 

the  formation  and  the  differentiation  of  the 
land  masses  of  the  globe  and  the  successive 
extinctions  and  creations  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals; all  these  facts,  notwithstanding  the 
imperfections  of  the  geological  record,  and  the 
fact  that  many  of  the  older  forms  of  animals 
were  nearly  as  much  specialized  as  those  now 
living,  tend  strongly  to  prove  that  on  the 
whole  the  world  as  it  now  exists  has  been  the 
result  of  progressive  development,  one  form 
coming  generically  from  another;  the  animal 
and  plant  worlds  constituting  two  systems 
of  blood  relations  rather  than  sets  of  inde- 
pendent creations." — Dr.  Packard's  Zoology, 
pp.  671-2. 

EVOLUTION. 

The  doctrine  of  theistic  evolution,  that  is, 
the  doctrine  that  declares  evolution  to  be 
God's  process  of  creation,  is  now  taught  by  all 
the  higher  colleges  of  our  country.  Among 
its  teachers  it  enrolls  the  names  of  Dr.  Mc- 
Cosh  of  Princeton,  to  represent  the  Presby- 
terians; Professor  Dana  of  Yale,  to  represent 
the  Congregationalists ;  Professor  Packard  of 


The  Development  Theory.  185 

Brown  University,  to  represent  the  Baptists. 
It  claims  among  its  seats  of  learning,  Har- 
vard, Dartmouth,  Cornell,  Michigan  Univer- 
sity, University  of  California  and  many  other 
colleges  of  less  note. 

Although  it  has  this  standing  among  reli- 
gious teachers,  two  classes  of  thinkers  still 
persist  in  lecturing  and  sermonizing  the  pub- 
lic into  the  belief  that  the  doctrine  itself  is  es- 
sentially atheistic.  The  two  classes  are  the 
atheists  and  the  faithful  among  the  theolo- 
gians. That  an  atheist  should  want  to  usurp 
this  doctrine  is  not  surprising;  that  an  ortho- 
dox theologian  should  help  him  to  succeed  is 
a  matter  of  surprise  and  deep  regret.  If  it 
concerned  the  atheist  or  the  theologian  alone 
the  evil  would  be  less  than  it  is.  As  it  is,  the 
real  harm  is  clone  to  thousands  of  young  peo- 
ple who  read  enough  to  know  that  science  ac- 
cepts some  sort  of  evolution  and  who  hear 
from  Sabbath  sermons  that  evolution  and 
godliness  are  not  only  inconsistent  but  de- 
structive of  each  other.  If  these  things  are 
stated  with  anything  like  fairness  to  the  facts. 


1 86  The  Development  Theory. 

it  ought  to  be  a  service  to  the  cause  of  truth 
to  spread  before  the  public  the  evidence  of  the 
extent  to  which  the  development  theory  has 
already  passed  into  general  acceptance,  and 
also  to  attempt  to  show  that  this  acceptance, 
where  accomplished  through  intelligent 
weighing  of  its  truth,  has  in  it  no  tendency  to 
atheism. 

Such  is  the  aim  of  these  pages.  No  effort 
will  be  made  to  defend  or  to  condemn  ac- 
cepted views,  only  to  record  them  and  their 
results. 

But  a  few  years  ago  light,  heat,  electricity, 
chemical  reactions  and  mechanical  motion 
were  supposed  to  be  due  to  entirely  separate 
acts  of  creation.  It  is  now  clearly  seen  that 
these  and  other  physical  forces  are  only  sep- 
arate links  of  one  chain  of  underlying  natural 
force.  It  is  demonstrated  that  nothing  of 
this  underlying  force  is  ever  wasted.  The 
motion  of  a  mill,  of  an  arm,  of  a  steam  engine, 
occurs  because  heat  or  some  other  link  of  the 
chain  is  changed  into  motion.  The  motion 
thus  created  expends  itself  by  becoming  again 


The  Development  Theory.  187 

heat  or  electricity  or  some  other  form  of  the 
same  chain  of  forces.  Nothing-  of  all  this  is 
now  made  or  destroyed,  not  even  wasted. 

These  things  are  now  the  commonplace 
facts  of  science.  The  natural  effect  of  them 
on  human  thought  would  be,  >that  whereas  we 
once  thought  God  created  light  alone,  we  now 
know  he  must  have  created  a  wider  fact  of 
which  light  is  only  a  part.  And  with  scien- 
tific Christians  this  was  the  only  effect  the 
change  produced..  Would  that  it  had  been 
left  to  this! 

How  this  view  of  the  truth  could  lessen 
anyone's  adoring  reverence  of  the  Infinite 
Source  of  all  this  wider  force  and  profounder 
power  is  difficult  to  understand;  that  it  should 
carry  with  it  a  tendency  to  atheism  is  incredi- 
ble, for  somewhere  in  that  long  chain  of  se- 
quences the  Creator's  power  must  come  in. 
The  normal  effect  upon  our  belief  would  be 
expressed  by  such  a  statement  as  this:  •  "'I 
once  believed  God  created  a  small  fact;  I  now 
see  he  must  have  created  a  whole  system  of 
facts  at  once." 


1 88  The  Development  Theory. 

This  tendency  to  wider,  more  generalized 
facts  is  the  one  characteristic  of  recent  scien- 
tific experiments.  Our  thoughts  must  be  ad- 
justed to  this  current  of  things  if  we  would 
keep  our  theology  a  working  power  among 
men. 

Still  more  plainly  is  this  wider  generaliza- 
tion marked  in  the  domain  of  chemistry.  In 
chemistry,  as  in  other  departments  of  science, 
experiments  continually  reveal  other  and 
wider  facts  and  forces  underlying  our  surface 
ones. 

The  discoveries  of  late  years  through  the 
use  of  the  spectroscope  have  added  greatly  to 
this  conviction.  These  show  that  the  distant 
stars  are  composed  of  chemical  elements  like 
those  of  our  own  earth.  This  certainly  gives 
one  a  sufficiently  generalized  idea  of  the  na- 
ture of  the  materials  out  of  which  sun,  moon 
and  planets  are  made.  If  we  consider  these 
materials  as  we  find  them  in  the  rocks  around 
us  we  shall  find  evidence  enough  of  develop- 
ment from  single  elements  to  complex  com- 
binations. 


g 


sj 


The  Development  Theory.  189 

As  a  surface  fact  nothing  can  be  more 
simple  than  a  piece  of  chalk,  yet  if  you  exam- 
ine it  closely  you  will  find  its  simplicity  to  van- 
ish and  in  the  place  of  that  simplicity  a  most 
complex  combination  of  chemistry,  history 
and  mineralogy.  It  tells  of  the  lowly  life  of 
a  company  of  animals  existing  in  the  deep  re- 
gions of  the  ocean,  milleniums  ago,  extract- 
ing the  carbonate  of  lime  from  the  waters 
around  them  and  through  the  wonderful 
chemical  forces  of  life  converting  this  lime 
carbonate  into  bony  skeletons  which  on  the 
death  of  the  animals  were  consigned  to  the  deep 
oozy  bed  of  the  ocean  to  become  chalk.  It 
tells  of  a  subsequent  elevation  of  this  ancient 
chalk  bed  into  a  montain  mass  of  a  neighbor- 
ing continent.  How  far  from  simple,  either 
in  time,  in  place  or  in  chemistry,  is  this  strange 
mixture  of  rock  and  of  history! 

Yet  you  may  say  of  this  piece  of  chalk, 
"God  created  it."  So  he  did,  but  how?  Evi- 
dently by  a  long  process  of  development  from 
simpler  elements  of  time,  force  and  material, 
to  what  you  now  find  it. 


19°  The  Development  Theory. 

A  piece  of  granite  from  the  hills,  no  more 
than  those  hills  themselves,  can  now  be  re- 
garded as  a.  thing  created  into  its  present 
form  by  an  instantaneous  exercise  of  divine 
power.  If  you  examine  it  closely  you  will  find 
it  to  be  a  combination  of  three  other  combina- 
tions. It  is  made  up  of  quartz,  feldspar  and 
mica;  the  quartz  is  a  combination  of  silicium 
and  oxygen;  the  feldspar  is  a  combination  of 
silicic  acid  and  aluminum  with  either  potash 
or  soda;  the  mica  is  a  combination  of  silicate 
alumina,  and  for  a  third  element,  either  pot- 
ash, soda,  magnesia,  lime,  or  even  iron. 
Surely,  here  is  development  in  its  most 
marked  form;  development  through  combina- 
tions complex,  and  varied  to  present  results. 
And  this  without  at  all  carrying  the  argument 
to  the  molecules  of  a  stage  anterior  to  these 
or  to  the  atoms  of  the  still  more  remote  stage; 
and  yet  the  changes  this  material  underwent 
in  these  preceding  stages  are  as  truly  a  part  of 
the  creation  of  your  piece  of  granite  as  the 
combination  of  its  quartz,  feldspar  and  mica. 
How  plainly  then  is  it  true  that  the  creation 


The  Development  Theory.  191 

of  a  piece  of  limestone  or  of  granite  consists 
in  such  a  combination  of  atoms  and  forces  in 
nature  as  shall  secure  these  resulting  masses, 
and  that  time,  and  often  a  good  deal  of  it, 
enters  into  such  combinations,  making  their 
existence  itself  a  history  of  changes. 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  the  object  here 
is  not  to  impress  the  hearer  with  a.  fact  in 
chemistry  or  in  mineralogy,  but  with  the  fact 
of  a  creation  through  development  accepted 
throughout  Christendom  for  the  last  hundred 
years  or  more  by  the  religious  of  all  parties, 
and  without  any  known  tendency  to  atheism. 
It  is  not  easy  to  see  why  the  wider  act  of  cre- 
ation should  have  less  need  of  a  creator  than 
the  narrower  one,  or  that  these  general  sys- 
tems of  nature  should  have  any  less  need  of  a 
plan  and  a  designer  than  the  more  special 
ones  of  our  older  thought.  There  is  in  both 
the  same  need  of  a  creator.  The  wider  sys- 
tems as  well  as  the  narrower  ones  will  show 
their  missing  links.  What  matters  it  where 
these  missing  links  occur? 

"From  Nature's  chain  whatever  link  you  strike, 
Tenth  or  ten-thousandth,  breaks  the  chain  alike." 


192  The  Development  Theory. 

If  the  power  and  wisdom  of  a  creating 
God  stand  behind  that  missing  link,  no  mat- 
ter where  it  occurs  in  the  creation  of  a  piece 
of  granite  itself  or  of  the  atoms  of  which  it 
is  composed.  And  yet  one  might  say  in  pass- 
ing, of  these  missing  links  in  all  systems,  that 
there  is  no  obvious  gain  in  making  the  argu- 
ment from  design  to  hang  rather  on  the  ab- 
sent than  upon  the  present  link,  as  if  a  broken 
link  in  a  chain  should  be  made  to  commend 
the  skill  of  the  mechanic  more  than  if  it  were 
unbroken. 

Several  years  ago  the  astronomer  La- 
Place  published  a  hypothesis  of  development 
applied  to  the  solar  system,  in  which  the  claim 
was  made  that  the  sun,  moon  and  planets  were 
not  created  one  by  one  from  nothing  by  di- 
vine power,  but  that  the  matter  of  which  they 
are  composed  once  existed  diffused  through 
space;  that  this  matter  was  drawn  together 
by  the  mutual  attraction  of  its  particles;  was 
condensed  into  such  position  as  to  give  play 
to  its  chemical  forces;  that  this  condensation 
developed  motion  in  the  whole  mass,  causing 


The  Development  Theory.  193 

it  to  revolve  around  its  center  of  gravity;  that 
the  increase  of  this  motion  resulted  in  the 
casting  off  of  'its  outer  portion  into  space, 
which  outcast  mass  would  in  time  become 
planets  and  moons  circulating  around  the  cen- 
tral mass,  and  that  our  present  sun  is  this 
great  central  residue  of  all  this. 

With  the  great  mass  of  the  world's  edu- 
cated thinkers  this  explanation  of  God's  mode 
of  creating  the  solar  system  has  passed  from 
the  domain  of  hypothesis  to  that  of  accepted 
theory;  one  capable  of  explaining  facts  in  its 
connection  not  capable  of  explanation  on  any 
other  theory. 

No  one  now.  thinks  of  objecting  to  it  on 
the  ground  oi  its  giving  a  substitute  in  its 
explanations  for  the  power  of  God  and  thus 
promoting  atheism,  although  this  was  often 
done  when  the  hypothesis  was  first  published. 
You  need  not  be  reminded  that  this  nebular 
hypothesis  is  one  of  development  as  applied 
to  the  solar  system. 

But  the  field  of  scientific  work  which  of  all 
others  shows  the  most  marked  change  in  the 


194  The  Development  Theory. 

use  of  the  word  "create"  is  that  of  geology. 
But  a  little  while  ago  it  was  generally  believed 
that  mountains  were  created  as  such  and  from 
nothing. 

It  is  now  clearly  seen  that  the  mountain's 
mass  once  existed  in  different  form,  perhaps 
extended  over  a  plain  or  sea  bed,  occupying 
the  very  place  now  occupied  by  the  mountain, 
and  that  at  an  earlier  period  the  materials 
that  now  constitute  its  rocky  mass  existed  as 
a  plastic  mass  of  mud  carried  to  this  very  place 
by  neighboring  rivers. 

Or 'if  we  take  for  our  illustration  a  still 
more  specific  case.  It  is  strictly  correct  to 
say  God  created  this  mountain  west  of  Port- 
land just  where  it  is.  But  what  do  we  mean 
by  created  here?  Let  us  inquire.  In  a  care- 
ful examination  of  the  mountain  itself  we  find 
at  least  four  different  kinds  of  materials  enter- 
ing into  its  structure.  Its  surface  to  the  depth 
of  several  feet  is  covered  with  a  rich  bed  of 
soil;  under  this  surface  soil  is  a  series  of  beds 
of  boulder  clay;  under  this  a  varying  mass  of 
basaltic  lava  evidently  the  remains  of  not  one 


The  Development  Theory.  195 

but  many  successive  lava  floods;  and  under- 
lying all  these  a  continuous  mass  of  shales  and 
sandstones  reaching  back  under  the  mountain 
to  Tualatin  plains  in  one  direction,  to  Scap- 
poose  and  the  Lower  Columbia  in  another, 
and  to  Eugene  City  and  the  upper  Willamette 
in  still  another.  And  so  connected  are  all 
these  parts  that  no  portion  can  be  separated 
from  the  others  in  the  part  it  took  in  this  one 
act  of  creating  power  which  we  call  the  crea- 
tion of  this  mountain. 

Each  of  these  portions  of  this  mountain 
has  a  history  of  its  own,  the  whole  a  common 
stretch  of  history.  If  we  turn  to  the  first,  the 
surface  layer,  and  ask  it  of  its  record,  we  shall 
be  informed  of  ground-up  material,  of  freez- 
ings and  thawings,  of  oxidations  and  deoxi- 
dations,  of  additions  from  decaying  leaves 
and  logs,  by  all  of  which  means  this  surface 
soil  Was  brought  to  its  present  condition  of 
usefulness.  If  we  examine  the  layer  under- 
lying this  surface  one,  that  of  the  boulder  clay, 
we  shall  find  a  like  stretch  of  history  to  mark 
its  preparation  for  its  place.  The  drift  of  the 


196  The  Development  Theory.. 

glacier  that  brought  its  heavy  boulder  masses 
to  their  present  place,  the  history  of  the  occa- 
sional piece  of  granite  that  seems  so  far  out 
of  place  among  porphyries  and  basalts  as  to 
suggest  an  iceberg  journey  from  some  north- 
ern shore,  all  these  fragments  of  story  un- 
avoidably come  into  our  conception  of  the 
creation  of  the  boulder  drift  that  constitutes 
the  second  layer  of  our  Portland  mountain. 
Then  we  shall  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of 
the  basaltic  layers  of  what  were  once,  without 
doubt,  great  lava  flows  over  level  causeways 
long  since  eroded  by  deep  valleys  or  narrow 
ravines  until  the  direction  of  their  outflow 
seems  now  almost  incredible. 

We  now  reach  the  basement  sedimentary 
rock  upon  which  all  this  upbuilding  has  been 
erected.  You  will  find  it  in  a  few  places  crop- 
ping out  in  the  river  bank  at  low  water.  It 
extends  back  under  the  mountain  to  Tualatin 
plains;  it  forms  the  foothills  around  the  plains; 
it  borders  the  valley,  forming  its  foothills 
through  South  Tualatin,  Wapato  lake,  Amity, 
Albany,  Eugene,  and  back  down  the  valley 


B 

K 

X 

si 


The  Development  Theory.  197 

on  the  east  to  Portland  again.  It  is  an  old 
sea  bed.  Throughout  its  extent  its  fossil  re- 
mains are  well  marked  and  definitely  fix  the 
time  in  which  its  sea  shells,  its  star  fishes  and 
its  sharks  lived  at  home  in  its  waters.  The 
materials  of  sand  and  mud  out  of  which  these 
sand  stones  and  shales  were  made  were 
brought  here  from  higher  lands,  so  that  at  the 
very  foundation  of  our  mountain  base  we  find 
ourselves  looking  back  to  an  earlier  period  for 
a  part  of  the  agencies  that  make  up  the  his- 
tory of  our  mountain  mass.  Such,  in  brief, 
is  the  natural  history  of  this  mountain  west  of 
Portland. 

Now,  if  we  say,  as  we  have  an  undoubted 
right  to  say,  "God  created  this  mountain,"  I 
am  compelled  by  the  facts  of  the  case  to  define 
created,  as  developed  through  a  long  contin- 
ued series  of  changes  in  which  heat  and  frost, 
sea  and  land,  stream  and  flood  and  tide,  all 
did  their  share. 

We  reach  a  like  conclusion  if  the  object  of 
our  study  be  the  natural  history  of  some  river 
channel.  Look,  for  illustration,  at  our  own 


198  The  Development  Theory. 

Columbia.  Of  this,  too,  we  may  say,  and 
say  properly,  God  created  it,  the  whole  of  it. 
But  what  does  this  act  of  creation  imply?  Let 
us  see:  The  long  winding  stream  of  water 
we  call  the  Columbia  river  is  a  vast  thread  that 
binds  into  geographical  oneness  regions  wide 
apart  and  strangely  varied,  but  united  in  this 
one  tie  of  an  extended  water  course. 

Similar  to  this  is  its  place  in  time;  here, 
too,  it  becomes  a  thread  that  ties  together 
widely  dissimilar  chapters  of  geological  his- 
tory. Let  us  try  to  recall  two  or  three  of 
these. 

That  we  may  get  a  glimpse  of  the  first  of 
these  restorations  of  past  history,  it  is  requi- 
site that  we  imagine  the  stream  of  time  rolled 
back  one  hundred  thousand  years  or  more. 

This  done  and  we  shall  find  the  water  shed 
of  the  Columbia  river  of  that  period  occupy- 
ing in  the  main  the  same  region  it  does  now, 
and  yet  along  its  whole  course  it  will  seem 
wondrously  changed.  It  was  then  in  its  lower 
or  western  portion  a  broad,  winding  strait, 
bearing  the  same  relation  to  the  interior  that 


The  Development  Theory.  199 

Fuca  straits  do  now  to  Puget  Sound.  A  broad 
beautiful  bay  extending  southward  from  this 
strait  to  where  Eugene  City  now  stands, 
fringed  with  deep  inlets  into  which  mountain 
streams  poured  from  the  same  valleys  these 
streams  now  occupy.  This  broad  stretch  of 
inland  water  let  us  call  the  Willamette  sound. 

Another,  and  far  greater,  extension  of  the 
Columbia  river  stretched  from  where  Walla 
Walla  now  stands  to  the  Yakima  valley,  mak- 
ing here,  too,  an  extensive  inland  sea. 

Still  another  extension  reached  frorh 
Snake  river  to  the  westward  to  and  including 
the  present  Klamath  marsh.  No  facts  in  the 
natural  history  of  the  country  are  plainer  than 
the  evidences  of  these  former  extensions  of 
this  great  water  course. 

Nor  was  this  the  beginning;  far  from  it. 
If  now  we  take  another  step  into  the  great 
past  we  shall  find  still  the  same  Columbia 
river,  but  now  only  as  a  connecting  series  of 
links  between  frequent  lakes  large  and  small. 
A  river  whose  banks  wrere  covered  with  palms, 
whose  lakes  and  streams  were  frequented  by 


200  The  Development  Theory. 

the  rhinoceros,  the  wild  horse — dwarfed  and 
giant — the  tapir,  the  camel  and  many  stranger 
forms  long  since  passed  away. 

At  the  time  of  this  earlier  chapter  the 
present  Willamette  valley  was,  through  many 
broad,  open  straits,  in  communication  with 
the  sea. 

If  now  with. this  extended  view  of  its  past 
history,  each  epoch  of  which  helped  to  form 
the  succeeding  one,  we  say  God  created  the 
Columbia  River  valley,  we  of  necessity  are 
held  to  imply  through  a  long  development  of 
forms  and  materials  and  forces  like  these  now 
at  work  around  us,  that  among  these  were 
the  heat  of  internal  fires,  the  frosts  of  unnum- 
bered winters,  changes  of  level  and  changes 
in  living  forms  on  its  banks;  which  of  course 
amounts  to  an  acknowledgment  that  we  re- 
gard the  development  theory  as  defining 
God's  process  of  creating  the  Columbia  river. 

What  is  here  said  of  mountain  mass  or  of 
river  channel  applies  with  like  force  to  the 
creation  of  a  whole  continent. 


The  Development  Theory.  201 

Our  own  continent  began  its  history  as 
such,  eons  ago,  as  a  long  strip  of  elevated  sea 
bed  extending  westward  and  northward  from 
our  present  Labrador.  To  this  nucleus  were 
added  through  long  periods  of  time,  and  by 
the  natural  agencies  of  flood  and  tide  and  the 
life  and  death  of  plant  and  animal,  successive 
strips  of  land,  each  strip  having  at  once  a 
separate  history  of  its  own  and  a  wider  histor- 
ical connection  with  the  whole  continent.  So 
plainly  is  this  true  that  the  whole  geological 
history  is  now  conceded  to  be  a  marked  in- 
stance of  a  grand  system  of  development 
with  plan  and  purpose  in  its  movements,  al- 
though conducted  through  ages  of  change 
and  the  agencies  of  nature. 

Age  after  age  thus  left  their  record  until 
our  continent  reached  its  present  southern  ex- 
tension in  Florida  and  the  gulf  coast,  and  its 
western  extension  along  the  shores  of  our 
coast  range  of  the  Pacific.  To  these  succes- 
sive areas  added  to  the  continent  geologists 
have  applied  the  names  Laurentian,  Silurian, 
Devonian,  Carboniferous,  Jurassic,  Creta- 


202  The  Development  Theory. 

ceous,  Eocene,  Miocene,  Pliocene,  Post  Ter- 
tiary, each  one  of  these  names  representing  in 
succession  a  period  of  time  and  an  area  added 
to  the  continent.  They  stand  toward  each 
other  in  three  lines  of  relationship.  First,  they 
stand  toward  each  other  in  the  relation  of 
parts  to  a  whole  continent,  each  part  in  such 
relation  to  the  whole  that  it  could  not  possibly 
fit  anywhere  else.  Second,  they  stand  to  each 
other  and  to  the  whole  in  the  relation  of  suc- 
cession in  history.  In  this  relation  to  the 
whole  continent  the  place  of  each  period  is  as 
necessarily  where  it  is  as  that  of  a  part  to  the 
whole.  The  third  relation  is  that  of  deriva- 
tion. As  before  stated,  each  successive  addi- 
tion to  the  continent  was  an  off-shore  sea  bed 
near  the  former  land,  the  muddy  sediment  of 
which  had  been  for  ages  wearing  from  the  up- 
lands; had  been  carried  to  the  sea  by  neigh- 
boring rivers  and  distributed  by  tides  and  cur- 
rents; had  at  length  been  elevated  into  dry 
land  to  form  another,  an  added  field,  to  our 
continental  form.  Thus  it  was  that  each 
added  area  was  derived  from  the  eroded  sur- 


The  Development  Theory.  203 

face  of  its  parent  country,  adding  the  relation 
of  direct  derivation  to  the  other  ties  that  bind 
the  whole  into  one  great  natural  development. 
Of  course  in  all  this,  whether  taken  from  the 
history  of  a  hill,  a  river,  valley,  or  a  continent, 
we  are  treating  of  inorganic  forces  and  devel- 
opments; life  has  as  yet  not  come  into  the 
question. 

And  now,  before  we  carry  our  subject  be- 
yond the  line  that  separates  the  organic  from 
'the  inorganic,  let  us  sum  up  our  conclusions 
drawn  from  this  part  of  our  subject. 

With  our  minds  directed  especially  to  the 
truths  of  chemistry,  we  may  state  that  it  was 
once  believed  God  created  granite  directly 
from  nothing.  The  educated  world  now  be- 
lieves that  God  created  the  ultimate  atoms  and 
the  forces  that  governed  their  relations,  and 
that  these  acted  on  by  their  surroundings 
made  the  granite.  The  difference  is  surely 
this:  The  older  belief  ascribes  to  God  the 
creation  of  innumerable  separate  facts;  the 
newer  thought  ascribes  to  God  the  creation 
of  a  system  that  results  in  these  facts. 


204  The  Development  Theory. 

The  system,  among  scientists,  prevails,  for 
all  modern  researches  tend  toward  system; 
only  an  added  evidence  that  God  works  by 
system. 

If  we  direct  our  inquiries  to  the  domain  of 
geology  a  similar  result  follows.  Educated 
men  find  the  evidence  overwhelming  that  God 
did  not  create  at  once  the  whole  continent  as 
men  once  believed,  but  that  he  so  directed 
natural  agencies  and  materials  that  the  nat- 
ural forces  of  these  acted  on  by  their  sur- 
roundings developed  a  continent. 

Here,  too,  the  change  into  a  generaliza- 
tion. God  did  not  stop  to  create  a  single  fact; 
he  created  a  vast  system  of  facts. 

And  as  in  both  these  departments  of 
thought — that  of  chemistry  and  that  of  geol- 
ogy— the  religious  world  has  accepted  these 
changed  views  without  conscious  detriment  to 
religious  faith,  it  must  follow  that  develop- 
ment as  a  form  of  creation,  as  God's  process  of 
creation  in  at  least  some  departments  of  his 
work,  is  an  accepted  doctrine  and  is  not  athe- 
istic. 


a 

s 


The  Development  Theory.  205 

But  let  us  now  go  back  a  little  in  our  geo- 
logical history  of  the  continent.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  the  development  of  our  con- 
tinent was  described  as  progressive  elevations 
of  new  portions  of  sea  bed,  like  so  many  added 
fields  to  an  old  farm. 

If  nowr  we  add  the  statement  that  each  of 
these  annexed  fields  was  in  its  turn  stocked 
with  plants  and  animals  suitable  to  its  period, 
we  have  the  opening  of  the  other  half  of  our 
subject,  development  as  applied  to  plants  and 
animals. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  there  were  des- 
ignated ten  or  more  of  these  annexed  fields 
during  the  whole  period  of  geological  history. 
All  through  this  history  running  through  mil- 
lions of  years  there  were,  side  by  side,  two 
kingdoms  of  life;  that  of  the  plant,  the  vege- 
table kingdom,  that  of  the  animal,  the  animal 
kingdom.  During  all  this  time  the  inter-rela- 
tions of  field  and  flora  and  of  field  and  fauna 
were  such  that  each  province  of  each  kingdom 
fits  where  it  is  and  would  fit  nowhere  else. 
This  triple  relationship  suggests  a  wider  sys- 


206  The  Development  Theory. 

tern  to  which  these  parts  are  essential  in  time, 
in  rank  and  in  unity  to  the  whole. 

The  perception  of  this  great  geological 
system  of  plants  as  well  as  of  animals,  long 
since  suggested  to  Professor  Agassiz  what 
was  known  as  his  system  of  evolution,  an  es- 
sentially embryonic  one,  and  therefore  not  de- 
pendent on  surroundings. 

The  other  type  of  evolution  is  that  of  vari- 
ations promoted  by  surroundings,  and  is  best 
represented  by  the  Darwinian  system. 
Neither  of  these  attempts  to  account  for  the 
origin  of  life  itself.  They  are  both  content  to 
ascribe  this  to  God. 

The  scripture  texts  that  relate  to  the  intro- 
duction of  life  into  the  world  are  the  follow- 
ing: 

i — "And  God  said  let  the  earth  bring  forth 
grass,  the  herb  yielding  seed,  and  the  fruit  tree 
yielding  fruit  after  his  kind." 

2 — "And  God  said,  let  the  waters  bring 
forth  abundantly  the  moving  creature  that 
hath  life." 


The  Development  Theory.  207 

3 — "And  God  said,  let  the  earth  bring 
forth  the  living  creature  after  his  kind,  cattle 
and  creeping  thing  and  beast  of  the  earth 
after  his  kind." 

If  these  passages  simply  assure  us  that  our 
Heavenly  Father  created  life  upon  the  earth 
and  in  the  waters  around  the  earth  by  start- 
ing its  streams  from  a  germ  which  he  caused 
the  waters  or  the  land  to  bring  forth,  then 
the  believer  in  special  creations  and  the  theis- 
tic  evolutionist  have  here  a  common  ground. 

Beyond  this  their  views  separate,  the  evo- 
lutionist claiming  that  God  created  the  possi- 
bility of  the  whole  system  in  its  first  germ  of 
life,  and  so  consigned  it  to  the  development  of 
the  natural  world.  To  him,  then,  these  pas- 
sages from  Genesis  open  a  vision  of  a  vast 
stream  of  life,  beginning  millions  of  years  ago 
in  the  dawn  of  the  Paleozoic,  increasing  nat- 
urally as  it  flowed  on  through  the  successive 
additions  to  the  continent,  rapidly  enlarging 
as  it  flowed  through  the  early  Tertiary,  till  the 
extending  continents  were  overspread  with 
life  in  the  wonderful  variety  of  its  higher  forms 


208  The  Development  Theory. 

with  which  the  later  Tertiary  prepared   the 
world  for  its  present. 

If  these  passages  of  Genesis  open  to  us- in 
vision  this  grand  procession  of  the  life  of  the 
past,  our  thought  of  God  will  certainly  kindle 
no  less  honor  to  him,  while  it  will  be  more  true 
to  the  facts. 

Man's  place  in  this  vast  stream  of  life  the' 
theistic  evolutionist  finds  no  difficulty  in  de- 
fining. His  flesh  is  of  the  earth  earthy;  his 
animal  life  belongs  with  the  broad  current 
above  described.  But  God  assures  us  that  he 
created  another  system,  in  this  wider  life 
stream,  even  a  spiritual  one;  for  it  is  written 
of  man  that  "God  breathed  into  his  nostrils 
the  breath  of  life;  and  man  became  a  living 
soul." 

Here  the  'Christian  evolutionist  finds  the 
latest  and  highest  creative  work  of  all — that 
to  which  all  rightfully  tends,  that  to  which  all 
else  was  intended  to  be  tributary — the  evolu- 
tion of  the  religious  destiny  of  mankind. 

Suppose  now  the  question  were  asked, 
what  effect  will  the  development  theory  have 


The  Development  Theory.  209 

on  the  faith  of  Christendom?  It  might  be 
presumptive  to  attempt  to  give  a  direct  an- 
swer to  so  grave  an  inquiry,  but  if  we  consult 
history  for  parallels  from  the  past  these  may 
help  us  form  a  judgment.  About  three  hun- 
dred years  ago  a  new  hypothesis  of  the  solar 
system  was  published  by  the  astronomer  Co- 
pernicus. His  theory  was  adopted  by  Gal- 
ileo, and  demonstrated  by  the  help  of  his 
newly  invented  telescope.  But  the  church 
was  alarmed,  and  asked  the  question:  "What 
will  become  of  the  faith  of  Christendom  if 
these  unscriptural  views  of  the  sun  and  the 
earth  be  generally  accepted?"  The  poor  as- 
tronomer of  the  telescope  was  condemned  for 
heresy  and  compelled  to  retract  his  published 
convictions  on  pain  of  the  penalty  due  to 
heresy.  The  heresy  triumphed.  Europe  ac- 
cepted the  new  views,  but  did  not  give  up  the 
faith  of  Christendom.  This  is  certainly  a  case 
in  point  and  ought  to  have  its  moral  for  us. 
Years  passed  and  a  new  scientific  heresy  was 
published — that  of  the  great  antiquity  of  the 
earth;  six  thousand  years  would  not  cover  the 


210  The  Development  Theory. 

scope  of  history  geologists  saw  in  the  rocks. 
The  theological  cry  was  again  raised  and  in 
almost  the  same  inquiry,  "What  will  become 
of  the  faith  of  Christendom  if  these  views  are 
accepted?"  Well,  time  passed,  the  longer 
chronology  was  generally  accepted,  and  the 
faith  of  Christendom  seemed  rather  to  im- 
prove under  the  change. 

But  yet  another  strain  was  in  store  for  the 
relation  between  theology  and  science.  The 
evidence  of  several  lines  of  scientific  inquiry 
seemed  to  point  to  a  longer  human  antiquity 
than  the  received  one. 

Again  the  old  cry  was  raised  of  atheism 
and  infidelity  against  the  innovators,  and 
again  the  newer  views  prevailed  without  much 
apparent  change  in  the  faith  of  Christendom. 
That  these  periodic  conflicts  between  theol- 
ogy and  science  have  been  entirely  harmless, 
no  well  informed  person  will  claim. 

The  church  cannot  put  herself  in  a  posi- 
tion of  chronic  antagonism  to  science  without 
harm. 


The  Development  Theory.  211 

But  in  opening  out  this  subject  so  that  we 
may  see  how  much  of  evolution  we  ourselves 
believe,  and  also  in  enumerating  the  evidences 
that  our  colleges  are  already  teaching  it  to 
our  youth  without  taint  of  atheism,  I  have 
done  the  work  proposed  by  these  pages. 

That  the  wise  and  good  of  the  nineteenth 
century  are  about  to  let  these  doctrines  make 
atheists  or  even  infidels  of  the  rising  genera- 
tion, I  cannot  believe.  That  they  are  neces- 
sarily destructive  of  faith  1  believe  as  little. 
That  the  American  church  may,  through  their 
help,  be  able  to  cast  aside  a  good  deal  of 
worthless  teaching,  and  rise  to  a  higher  plane 
of  working  power,  is  far  more  legitimate  to 
the  signs  of  the  times. 


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